


Scratch On The Moon

by Vulcanodon



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Western, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gunslinging, Horror Elements, Implied Mike/Bill, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Relationship(s), Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:13:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23986621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulcanodon/pseuds/Vulcanodon
Summary: Eddie Kraspbak has put aside his old life for good. He drives a stagecoach now and keeps to himself- his days of running with the Denbrough gang are long gone.  But when two old friends show up and tell him they have unfinished business back in Derry, Eddie can’t resist the chance to put a final nail in the coffin of the past…and maybe find out why Richie broke his promise all those years ago.“I’ll take left if you take right,” Eddie calls out but when he looks over Richie isn’t even firing his gun; he’s looking at Eddie with a strange, unreadable expression on his face.“What is it?” Eddie asks, panicking. “Are you hit?”“No,” Richie says, “I just. I just wanted you know. That I…that I feel the same way.”“What?” Eddie asks, totally lost. A bullet whistles past his ear.“I mean I...” Richie says, as if he’s struggling to get it out. “I feel the same way about you. I mean. That I always did.”“Could we maybe postpone this conversation?” Eddie says, having to yell over the gunfire. “To a time when we aren’t getting shot at?”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 122
Kudos: 317





	1. The Proposition

The stagecoach is barely two hours ride out of Blackwood when Eddie sees the riders on the hill.

They’re not close, just two distant silhouettes on the ridge, but he spurs the horses on faster anyway. He’s been doing this job long enough to recognise trouble when he sees it. It’s not that he can’t handle a stick up (he has the Remington stowed away under his feet for that) but what he _is_ worried about is being delayed. Eddie’s made his money off providing the fastest passage from Buffalo to Syracuse; it’s not a reputation he’s prepared to lose anytime soon.

For the next two hours he keeps a watchful eye out, but if they are following, they’re doing a good job of it because he doesn’t see them again after that. Still, it’s enough to ruin his mood. It had been a good day up until then, or at least, the sun had been shining and they had been making good time. Eddie had even been whistling a little, which he didn’t do much of these days.

“I doubt that’s the last we’ll see of them,” he tells the horses darkly, and then feels embarrassed.

He’s been doing that more and more these days. If it becomes a habit, then the passengers might start to notice. 

The truth is, he’s a little disappointed.

Back when he had started out as a stagecoach driver, the roads had been more far more dangerous and a hell of a lot more exciting. If the wild animals and rough terrain weren’t enough, there was always the threat of unscrupulous citizens looking to make their money off a nice easy target like a stagecoach. Back then, they had called Eddie crazy for riding alone without a guard at his side. At first it was hard to find passengers who would take the risk.

After a while though, the word had gotten around; Eddie Kaspbrak might ride alone but damn if he didn’t do it fast.

One the rare occasions that Eddie let other drivers buy him a drink, he would tell them that he did it to cut the weight. _I like to travel light,_ he’d say, _if I could go without the passengers I would_.

They would laugh at him but look a little puzzled, like they weren’t sure he was joking. 

Nowadays though, the world was a hell of a lot more civilized. The roads weren’t so empty anymore and now Eddie wasn’t the only one riding solo. He could go for weeks at a time without having to so much as touch the rifle.

_Which is fine,_ he’d tell the horses. _That’s the way things have to be. The country’s grown up and we all have to grow up with it._

But still, when the world got quieter, all at once Eddie found that he had a whole lot of time on the road with nothing but his own thoughts to occupy him. He would listen to the scraps of conversation passing up from the coach wagon behind him and sometimes think that maybe it would be nice to have someone riding alongside him. If only because after nearly a decade or travelling the same roads, a man could get pretty bored seeing the same countryside roll past every day.

So, when the stagecoach turns a corner and he sees the two horsemen waiting for them in the road ahead, it’s with something like excitement that Eddie pulls up on the reins.

His reaction times are quick even now and he does it sharply but the thing about trying to stop six horses all at once, is that it takes a while. This was usually a benefit when it came to hold-ups; even the most slow-witted bandit generally knows not to stand in the way of a stagecoach when it was barrelling down the road at him. Even if your nerves were good enough, then there was no guarantee that your horse wouldn’t turn skittish and bolt. Eddie had seen more than a few would- be highwaymen get thrown from their mounts that way.

But to their credit, the mounted men ahead are stock still, even as the stagecoach rattles towards them. They look like two dark shadows with their backs to the sun, but even squinting against the light Eddie can still make out the six-irons glinting at their sides.

Their horses were well trained too, and something about the one on the left, a large well-kept thoroughbred, catches Eddie’s attention, snagging some distant memory-

But then the stagecoach was coming to a jerky halt, just paces from the two riders and Eddie begins to think more seriously about the rifle under the seat. Was it as close to hand as he had left it?

“Is there a problem? Why are we stopped?” a passenger asks, sticking his head out of the side window. There are five of them in there and two of them were armed. Eddie needs to play this one carefully. He doesn’t want it turning into a shootout, mostly because he can’t stand the idea of getting bullet holes in his nice new paintwork.

“No problem at all sir,” Eddie says calmly, keeping his eyes fixed on the two figures ahead of him. “You get back inside now, you hear? We’ll be on our way in just a moment.”

He raises his voice, addressing the riders. “Am I telling the truth gentlemen? Or do we in fact have a situation on our hands?”

“We’re not looking to cause any trouble,” the rider on the left says, holding up his hands to show that they’re empty.

“Well what are you looking for then?” Eddie says glancing between them. “If it involves any of my passengers you can keep on moving. There’s nothing for you here.”

His eyes have adjusted a little now and he can see them a little clearer now. They make a mismatched pair; the one on the left is pale and short where his companion is tall and dark but beyond that he can’t make out much, not with the sun behind them and their hats pulled low.

“We aren’t looking for them Eddie,” the man on the right says. “We’re looking for you.”

For a moment Eddie is caught off-guard, and the only thing he can think is that the law has finally caught up with him after all these years of lying low. But there are no stars pinned on their jackets that he can see, and no lawman that Eddie’s ever met has that familiar deep voice, the same now as it was fifteen years ago.

“Mike,” he says in a low exhale. “How the hell did you find me?”

Mike pushes up his hat to reveal a wide, easy grin.

“Eddie,” he says warmly. “I didn’t think you’d recognize us.”

“I almost didn’t,” Eddie says. “But I recognize that horse.”

He nods his head at the white thoroughbred on the left. “You still not found a new one yet Bill? That nag must be almost twenty years old now.”

“He’ll last another twenty,” Bill says and even without the stutter, Eddie would recognize that voice anywhere. “Silver’s tough as nails.”

Eddie lets himself grin for a moment, feeling suddenly eighteen years old again and half crazy for the glory of it all.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone back to the old ways- is this a hold-up after all?”

“No,” Mike says. “But we need to talk. What would you say if I told you we were getting the old gang back together?”

Eddie feels the smile die on his face.

“You know I can’t do that Mike,” he says, not without regret. “That’s all in the past now.”

“It’s not what you think,” Bill says urgently. “It’s Derry. We need to go back. It’s not over.”  
  


Eddie goes very still.

Nothing has changed, the sun is still shining but it feels suddenly colder. The wind is still blowing through the valley like it always does, warm and tugging at his jacket and hair and for a moment Eddie could swear there’s a new scent being carried along with it, like old blood or rusted iron…

“No,” he says bluntly. “I’m sorry Bill. No.”

“Eddie,” Bill says in a pleading voice and then he hesitates, like he’s forcing himself to say it. “Your mother- she’s still living out there. Please. “

“Goddamn you,” Eddie snaps, flushing with anger. “I should have gone ahead and run you both down.”

“Eddie, listen,” Mike says urgently but Eddie’s heard enough.

“Get out of the way,” he says, gripping the reins. “I have a timetable to keep to.”

“Will you at least talk with us?” Bill says stubbornly, not budging. “For old times’ sake?”

“I should shoot you down for old times sake Denbrough,” Eddie says and flicks his reins to get the horses going. “But fine. I’ll be near Augustville in two days. If you still want to talk, meet me there. Right now, I’ve got a job to do.”

Bill looks like he wants to argue but, at a warning look from Mike, he shuts his mouth.

“We’ll be there Eddie,” Mike says and even after they get out of the road and the stagecoach is well on its way, Eddie can feel them two of them watching him go.

The feeling lingers for a long time.

* * *

Eddie spends the next two days working himself up into a rage. He can’t decide whether he’s angrier at them for finding him or angry at himself for being for a moment so happy to see them. By the time he’s brought his passengers to their destination in Syracuse he’s thought of a thousand reasons why it would be a terrible idea to talk to them again.

“I won’t go,” he tells the horses as he’s rubbing them down that night in the stables. “I won’t turn up. And they’ll just have to understand. I have a new life now. I’m nearly forty for god’s sake. I can’t run around playing with guns anymore.”

He thinks about it over a meagre dinner at the boarding house and as he sits by the fire in the common room glaring holes through the newspaper in his hand. Only when he’s in bed that night, in a creaky draft backroom does he let himself think about the one thing he had swore off thinking all those years ago.

_We’re getting the gang back together_ , Mike had said but he _couldn’t_ have meant everyone. Because then they would have had to find-

Eddie doesn’t even let himself think the name. It’s still too painful, even after all this time.

* * *

In the morning he wakes up and knows there’s no way on hell he’s going to meet them. He’s already too late anyway. Augustville is a half-day’s ride away. They’ll probably be gone by now.

Having decided this, it comes as a shock to Eddie to find that, just one hour later, he had not only gone and checked Annabelle out of the stables and saddled her up, but was in fact now riding her north up the Seneca river.

“I’m insane,” he tells her, out of breath already. “I must be insane.”

She doesn’t answer except to whinny in protest as he urges her on faster. He’s had her for two years now and she’s a good horse, a Missouri fox trotter with dappled grey coat and a sweet nature. So good natured in fact, that Eddie feels guilty about keeping her in the Syracuse stables while he’s away on the stagecoach. It’s an indulgence, one he can’t really afford but he’s never really grown out of the thrill of being on horseback and for all that he’s fond of them, the stagecoach horses are slow, cumbersome animals to ride.

With Annabelle though, and an empty stretch of road, he can ride fast. He can ride like the devil and even if Eddie’s supposed to be a changed man now, there’s always a little part him itching for that recklessness. That speed.

She’s slowed a little over the years but that’s alright. Eddie’s not as quick as he used to be either.

They reach Augustville in record time and Eddie is aching from the ride even as he hops to the ground outside of the town’s only saloon. If Bill and Mike are anywhere, they’d be here.

In Augustville, there’s no place else to go. To call it a town is generous, despite the grand name. It’s little more than a single street etched out in the dirt and only real virtue is its location; perched as it is on the banks of Oneida Lake.

His hands are shaking a little on the door as he walks in and already, he’s thinking _, it’s too late, they’re gone, they’re gone._

But he needn’t have worried. They’re sitting at a dark table in the back, half hidden in shadow, but Eddie picks them out immediately. They seem to have been there a while, judging from the half drained bottle between them and the cards laid out on the table, but when Mike looks up and sees Eddie he smiles as if he never had a doubt that Eddie would show up.

It’s just the two of them there, and Eddie tries to stop gritting his jaw quite so hard. He isn’t sure if the feeling he’s experiencing is relief or disappointment.

As he walks over, Bill practically falls out of his seat to get up and greet him.

“Eddie! I knew it, I knew you’d see the light,” he says, grasping Eddie’s hand and shaking it so warmly that Eddie has the impression that, if it weren’t for the curious faces of the other patrons, Bill would be pulling him into an embrace.

“Slow down there Bill, I haven’t agreed to do anything but talk,” Eddie says but he’s grinning back despite himself. For all the time that’s passed, Bill’s enthusiasm is still as infectious as ever.

“Same old Eddie,” Mike says warmly, clapping Eddie on the back. “Just as cautious as you used to be.”

“Someone had to be cautious back then,” Eddie says. “The rest of you were always running in guns blazing. If it weren’t for me and Stan-”

“If I haven’t heard that a hundred times before,” Bill says, rolling his eyes. “Come on, sit down, have a drink.”

“It’s barely past noon,” Eddie says doubtfully, but when Mike presses a glass into his hand, he doesn’t push it away. He does however insist on wiping down the glass with his handkerchief before he lets Mike fill it.

“Still doing that huh?” Bill asks with a wry smile.

Eddie ignores him, holding the glass up the light to see better.

“Excuse me if I don’t plan on catching cholera anytime soon,” he says and tries to ignore the laughter that Mike is trying to pass off as a cough.

The last time he had seen them had been fifteen years ago. Bill hadn’t changed much since then; his hair had grey in it and there were new lines on his face, but his eyes were the same blue as always. Fifteen years didn’t seem to have done anything to Mike at all except to have maybe made him even more handsome and broad-shouldered than Eddie had remembered.

They both looked happier than when Eddie had last seen them but then again, that wasn’t so difficult to achieve. Those last few days had been rough on everybody.

By the end, no one had been smiling all that much.

“It was a hell of a job tracking you down,” Bill says when they’re all settled with a drink in their hand. “I thought you were planning to settle up near Sweetwater? Start a ranch or something, wasn’t that the plan?”

“Plans change,” Eddie says lightly, trying to sound nonchalant. “I tried it up there for a while, but the settled life didn’t stick.”

“So we heard,” Mike says. “We went up there to look for you and someone said you were married. Is that true?”

He sounds doubtful and Eddie bristles a little.

“I was,” he said. “For a while. But I guess that didn’t stick either. I’ve been driving the coach for about ten years now.”

Bill and Mike exchange a glance and some unspoken message is passed between them.

“So you’re alone then?” Bill blurts out. “See, we when we went out looking for you we thought that maybe you’d be with R-“

“I’m not,” Eddie says coldly, cutting Bill off before he can say the name. “The last time I saw him was the last time I saw _you_.”

There’s a heavy silence in which Eddie takes a quick defensive gulp of his whiskey. It burns going down and his eyes water a little; he’s not used to it anymore. Bill looks visibly shaken but Mike just nods sadly.

“That’s a shame,” he says quietly.

Eddie shrugs and he’s trying to seem unaffected but he’s aware that he’s not pulling it off.

He’s still so angry, even after all this time. He thought that would have faded by now, but the wound is still just as fresh as it was back then in Sweetwater.

“I guess we were always headed down different paths,” he says and then tries to brush it off with a smile. “So, what about you two? Are you still riding with the others?”  
  


Bill shakes his head. “The rest of us didn’t last long after you and Beverly left. Ben left for the city not long after- between you and me I think his heart was a little broken. Then Stan went off to get that respectable career he was always talking about.”

“You couldn’t really call us much of a gang at that point,” Mike says but he sounded more fond than bitter. “We hadn’t robbed so much as an applecart for months. We were just wandering around really. Then we found Newhaven.”

“What’s Newhaven?” Eddie asks even though what he really wanted to ask was what Richie had been doing. What he had been thinking.

“Newhaven is the sweetest little town you’ve ever seen,” Bill says, his eyes lighting up. “It’s small but it’s on the railway line. Beautiful creek nearby- you should see the flowers in spring. Nicest people you ever met.”

“Sounds lovely,” Eddie says drily, not really interested. “So, what’s so important about it?”

“Nothing at all,” Mike says, laughing. “It’s just another little town. But for whatever reason when we got there, we didn’t feel like going any further. We’ve been living there ever since.”

“All three of you?” Eddie asks, knowing he’s betraying himself with the eagerness in his voice.

“…No,” Mike says after a pause. “Richie rode on alone after a while. He didn’t say where. He just said he had someplace he needed to be.”

Eddie’s fist clenches involuntarily and he takes another drink to steady himself.

“So, what do you two do in this town of yours,” he asks coolly, pretending not to see the looks Bill and Mike keep giving each other. He had remembered the silent way of communicating they always had; what he had forgotten was how annoying it could be.

“We started a library,” Mike says with quiet but obvious pride. “Started with five books in an old shed. Nowadays it’s one of the biggest in the county. Folks come a long way to use it. Used all those dishonest funds we spent so much time accumulating.”

“It’s Mike’s library really,” Bill corrects, smiling. “He put most of the work in. I just sit around writing most days.”

“You say that like your writing didn’t fund half our collection,” Mike says, sounding proud in a different way now. “They love stories of the uncharted west up in the city.”

“Well looks like we should be drinking to congratulate you both,” Eddie says, smiling but feeling a little cold. “Sound like you got everything you wanted.”

He means it, and he’s happy it worked out for them in the end. God knows they deserved it after all they went through, but even so Eddie can’t help but feel a little sore about it when his own dreams had come to nothing in the end. 

They finish the bottle between them just while catching up and by the time they order a new one, the sun is beginning to dip outside the window and they’re all getting tipsy. The conversations flows easily enough, but as time goes on Eddie becomes more and more aware of the things they aren’t talking about.

Finally, he puts down his empty glass with a clink on the table and put his hand over the brim when Bill tries to fill it.

“Let’s put our cards on the table here,” he says, looking them as steadily as he can manage with a belly full of whiskey. “You two didn’t show up out the blue after fifteen years to _not_ hold up my stagecoach and talk about the old days. What’s going on in Derry?”

He stumbles over the name a little; it still feels rotten coming out of his mouth.

* * *

_He doesn’t like to think about Derry in the daytime, but he’s dreamt of it every night since he left._

_They had all grown up there or nearabouts. It was in Derry that they started running together and maybe looking back, that was the only good thing that had ever come out of that ugly place._

_Even before the Bowers gang had moved in, the town had something off about it. The water tasted strange there, though as kids they had never noticed that. They thought all the water in the world tasted like that; sweet and putrid. In Derry, whiskey and bullets were cheap and so were lives. The people were hardened and what little food was grown on the ground was hard won. Even the better off families struggled to put food on the table. Legitimate industry had dried up a long time ago when people stopped finding gold nuggets in the river._

_Illegitimate business however had always boomed in Derry; the town had a rich tradition of murder, robbery and violence. It wasn’t a surprise really that the kids that Eddie had played with in the dusty street had grown up to be outlaws. It was practically tradition in a town like that._

_They had been known to the law as the Denbrough Gang, but none of them had thought of themselves like that. True, Bill was the one to ride at the front of the posse and they would have all given their lives for him without a thought. But theirs had been a democratic society. They must have all been around sixteen or seventeen when they held up their first stagecoach; just kids really, just playing at guns. After that it wasn’t long before they had a reputation as the most elusive gang south of the St Lawrence river._

_They had camped out at night under the stars on the hard ground and what money they did get was always gone too soon. There were weeks on end where they had eaten nothing but hard tack; it had been a life of total freedom, which was something all of them valued above everything else._

_Each of them was running from something, and all of them were running from Derry._

_They hadn’t lived totally without laws, even if they were laws of their own construction. They had never killed a soul who didn’t deserve it; they had never robbed a place that couldn’t afford it. They had thought themselves very noble, but in the eyes of the law they were no better than any other thief or murderer. As such, they lived their lives constantly on the run._

_There had been seven of them against the world in those days. Bill Denbrough. Mike Hanlon. Stanley Uris. Ben Hanscom. Beverly Marsh. Richie Tozier._

_And little Eddie Kaspbrak, riding like the wind. His mother had never forgiven him._

_Eddie had thought she would die from the shock of it when she read his name in the paper, but no. She had gone on living out of spite._

_He had ridden with the gang from the age of seventeen to twenty-seven. Sometimes Eddie thinks he might have only truly been alive for those ten years. He was thirty-nine now and every day since leaving the gang had felt like some kind of afterlife._

_In the end, it had been Derry that had driven them apart, just as it had been Derry that had brought them together._

_They had been far from it and doing well when the news of their hometown had come trickling down the wire. In the years since they had been gone, the Bowers Gang had moved in._

_The Bowers Gang had been a constant presence during their childhood in Derry but never more than an inconvenience. They spent their days hatching petty scams and causing a ruckus at the Derry saloon. But over the years it seemed things had changed; whatever was happening in Derry, the rumors said, it was bad._

_Eddie couldn’t have cared less frankly; Derry could have been swallowed up by the ground for all he cared. But to everyone’s surprise, Bill had argued that they had to go back. To do what they could to help._

_They had argued about it for what seemed like days. Eddie wasn’t the only one with a horror at the thought of returning. Stan and Richie had both argued that they should leave it to the law. As Richie had put it, they were thieves, not philanthropists._

_But Bill had stood firm and he had Mike and Ben on his side, all of them united in the conviction that they had a duty to help the town that had raised them. All of them still had family back there after all, in one form or another._

_In the end it had come down, like it usually did, to Beverly’s swing vote. She had sat silently for a long time watching the fire, hand tracing across the scar across her lip. Finally, she had looked up at them and said,_ we should go back. I don’t like it, but I think we have to.

_And so, they did._

_It had taken them not even a month to go back to Derry and put an end to the Bowers Gang, but what they found when they returned was so bad that when it was all over, that all knew some irreversible change had occurred._

_Though they tried for a while to carry on as they had before, it wasn’t long after that that they went their separate ways._

_Eddie tries not to, but he spends most of his days thinking about the past. About the thrill of riding full pelt with a mask pulled up high around his face. About the faces of the others around the campfire at night._

_About other things too, sometimes. Long fingers curled around a cigarette. The heady smell of cologne. The rumbling feeling of laughter from a chest pressed against his back. No matter how hard he tries to forget, his mind keeps returning to these things._

_When his mind returns to Derry though, it’s almost always in Eddie’s nightmares._

* * *

Now, in the darkening Augustville saloon, the smile fades from Mike’s face and he sighs heavily.

“We thought it was over too,” he says. “But it looks like we were wrong.”

“Two weeks ago I received a letter,” Bill says grimly. “From Georgie.”

“Your brother?” Eddie asks, lifting an eyebrow. “He still lives there?”

Bill nods. “With his family. He has two little kids now. Two boys, nine and eleven.”

“They can’t move?” Eddie asks but even as he says it, he knows he’s being unfair. People have land they can’t sell down in Derry. They have ties to the place that won’t break. Hell, Eddie should know that by now. Derry doesn’t let you leave.

“They can’t,” Bill says flatly. “But they might have too soon anyway. Georgie says that the Bowers Gang is back and worse than ever.”

“Impossible,” Eddie breathes. “We wiped them out. Mike, I saw you shoot Old Man Bowers with my own eyes. “

“He had a son,” Mike says, watching the light catch the whiskey in his glass. “Henry. Looks like he’s following in his father’s footsteps. Things sound real bad Eddie. Worse than before even.”

_Not possible_ , Eddie thinks but instead he says, “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m fond of Georgie, Bill, you know I am. But I can’t go back. Not after what we saw…what we _did_ last time. I went with you once Bill; don’t ask me to do it again.”  
  


Bill looks tortured but he nods without argument. “I understand.”

“He’s _not_ asking you though Eddie,” Mike says firmly. “ _I am_. We need to finish what we started. Or all of what happened last time was for nothing, don’t you see? Don’t you want it all to have meant something?”

Every part of Eddie wanted to say no. He looked down at the empty glass in his hand and even as he tries to suppress them, the memories come rushing back. The empty streets. The little girl holding her mother’s hand. The blood on his white shirt. The creaking of that goddamn rocking chair.

But Mike was right. What would Eddie have to show for his life if he didn’t do this? Just a pile of regrets, with nothing but his anger to keep him warm when he was old. An endless slow ride with no one to talk to.

“Fine,” he tells them, looking up. “Goddamn you both to hell but I’ll do it.”

They look surprised, and then relieved, as if they hadn’t expected him to give in so easily. Mike laughs and pours him another drink, but Bill looks like he could almost cry.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “Thank you, Eddie.”

“Don’t mention it,” Eddie says, and he means it. “Now when are setting off on this trip? Are we meeting the others near Derry?”

Mike and Bill exchange another awkward glance.

“Well that’s the thing,” Mike says, obviously choosing his words carefully. “You’re actually the first person we have onboard. We sent a telegram to Ben in the city, but he hasn’t responded and it’s too far to travel out there to get him. And Beverly’s disappeared off the face of the earth by all accounts.”

“Okay…” Eddie says slowly. “So, who’s next?”

“Stan,” Bill says and then he pauses. “And then, well. I guess Richie.”

There’s a heavy pause where Eddie looks down at his drink, trying to ignore the way the others are looking at him.

“Uh-huh,” Eddie says finally and then he drains his glass to the last drop and puts it down on the table with a loud crack. “Well I don’t see any harm in having another drink first.”


	2. The Magnificent Six

By the time they set off the next morning, Eddie is in a dark mood and already deeply regretting the impulse to drown his sorrows the night before. Of all the things to try and do while hungover, trying to ride a horse was maybe the worst of the lot.

His only consolation was that Bill at least seemed equally miserable; ashen faced and hunched over in his saddle. Mike on the other hand had practiced more restraint and was obnoxiously cheerful, leading the way and talking happily about the weather.

Last night before passing out on the floor of the room that Mike and Bill had rented, Eddie had sat down and written a long letter to the stables in Syracuse, asking them to look after the horses and coach for him until his return. He had stuffed the instructions into an envelope alongside a significant chunk of his savings before passing it on to the landlady to send.

Now in the light of day, Eddie has the creeping suspicion that what he had written might be completely incomprehensible. The whole idea of this little adventure seemed a lot less exciting and a lot more foolish now he wasn’t drunk.

But nonetheless, Eddie had agreed to do it. And he had to admit, even with the pounding headache and the foul taste in his mouth, it felt good to be out on the road again with the others. Even if Mike _did_ keep whistling. 

“So just where are we headed anyway?” Eddie calls out. “Where did Stan end up?”

Bill opens his mouth to answer but then turns green and closes it with a snap.

“You say,” he says to Mike, waving his hand. “I’m just gonna be quiet for a bit.”

Mike rolls his eyes but pulls back a bit so he’s riding alongside Eddie.

“From what we can make out, he’s in a small town up near Saratoga,” he says. “Just a day’s ride from here if we don’t take our time. He’s got a little office set up there.”  
  


“What did he end up doing?” Eddie asks. “Business?”

“Accountancy,” Mike says. “Seems like it’s doing well too. We found his advertisement in the papers.”

“Huh,” Eddie says, creasing up his forehead.

It actually makes a lot of sense; he remembers Stan insisting on taking ledger books from the banks they hit, when the rest of them went straight for the safes. He had used to go over them back at the camp for hours sometimes, biting his lip in concentration and lost to the outside world. At the time Eddie had thought he had been doing it to look for tip offs, help them plan their next big score. But maybe Stan had also taken comfort in the numbers. In a life filled with chaos, it must have been reassuring to think that at least some things could be carefully recorded and organised into neat rows.

It takes them more than a day in the end, mostly because while Eddie’s hangover evaporated by midday, Bill’s only seemed to get worse as time went on. By the time the sun set that night, they were still miles from their destination and Mike insisted, against Bill’s protests, on setting up camp.

“I’m fine,” Bill had protested but when it came time to dismount, he practically fell off his horse.

“I don’t know Bill, this might be worse than we thought,” Eddie tells him, pressing a hand to Bill’s forehead. “Sometimes symptoms like this can be the onset of something worse. Have you been drinking from the river? Any coughing? Typhoid can set in fast.”

Bill, stricken, looks over at Mike where he’s laying out the bedrolls. 

  
“You don’t have typhoid,” Mike says with firm reassurance. “Eddie, why don’t you go and see if you can find us some firewood?”

“You can never be too careful,” Eddie says sternly, standing up from where he had been crouching next to Bill and brushing the mud from his knees. “If I had typhoid, I hope neither of you would try and sugar-coat it for me.”

“I promise you we won’t,” Mike says, sounding long-suffering.

Bill cheers up a little when the fire is set and after he’s managed to choke down some food. So much so that after a while he begins to get enthusiastic about the prospect of a night under the stars.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” he says after a while. “I never knew how much I would miss it. The trees, the quiet, the total isolation. It’s really how life ought to be. Civilization might have comfortable beds and plumbing but those things pale in comparison to sound of wild bird calls in the night.”

“What was it you wrote again?” Eddie asked doubtfully. “Poetry?”

Bill laughed but shook his head. “Westerns. Dime novels really.”

“ _Massacre at the Corral_ , _The Lone Horseman_ …. stuff like that?” Eddie asks, interested despite himself.

Mike lets out a laugh and Bill goes red.

“Exactly like that actually,” Bill says and then hesitates. “ _Massacre at the Corral_ was mine actually.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows and nearly drops his plate of beans. “You actually are a writer!”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” Mike says and then he fishes around in the saddlebag by his side. He pulls out a slim, dog eared novel and tosses it over to Eddie. The cover is battered but he can still make out a man in a white hat on the cover, holding up a smoking pistol.

“You carry that around?” Bill asks Mike, sounding embarrassed.

“Why is there only on man on the cover if the title is _Seven Ride At Dawn_?” Eddie asks.

“The other six wouldn’t fit I guess,” Bill says, shrugging.

Eddie hums and packs the book away safely in the bag for safekeeping. He wonders how much Bill drew on his own experiences; if that’s the case then Eddie isn’t sure if he wants to read it.

For all that Bill had waxed rhapsodic about the wild bird calls and stars, Eddie can’t share his enthusiasm about sleeping on the hard ground. He had forgotten the way in which you could feel every rock and branch through the thin blanket. It was a warm night and they were sleeping under the open sky. The possibility of catching pneumonia was distant but still weighed heavily on Eddie’s mind. Civilization with all it’s warm beds and hot bathtubs, seemed more enticing by the minute.

The stars overhead seem to press down on him, and he spends a long time before he falls asleep lying on his back, staring up into the dark. He can’t remember if they had always made him feel so lonely.

* * *

“So, is this the place?” Eddie asks.

They had risen early, made it to town before nine and were now standing in front of a well-appointed little building with white slat on the main street.

“This is it,” Mike says. “Look at the sign.”  
  


It was copper or at least copper-plated and it gleamed in the sunlight. Eddie got the impression that it was polished often and with a great deal of care and attention.

“Office of Uris and Associates, Chartered Accountants,” Bill reads off with an air of surprise. “I can’t believe he’s been using his real name. I haven’t gone by Denbrough in years. Do you use your name Eddie?”

“No,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “I took my wife’s.”

“Maybe he’s made things right somehow,” Mike says, frowning. “Paid off his bounty.”

“It was a long time ago now,” Eddie says, but he’s doubtful.

Inside, the place is small but well-kept and pristinely clean. There’s a waiting room immediately inside with pretty embroidered cushions on the seats and lace curtains at the window. The whole place smells like beeswax. It reminds Eddie a little of the house he had shared with Myra in the early days of their marriage; but that had been a clinical, antiseptic type of home. This place for all its careful arrangement, seemed to hold a kind of love that Eddie had never felt in any of the homes he had lived in.

The woman sitting at the reception desk rises when they enter. She’s a slight, small woman with big brown eyes and hair that doesn’t seem to want to stay penned up; she’s also heavily pregnant.

“Please, don’t get up on our account,” Bill says, holding up his hands. “We only wish to pay a visit to Mr Uris.”

“Oh,” the woman says, giving them a doubtful look. “Do you have an appointment?”

Eddie wonders how many strangers they get in this town. None of them cut a particularly threatening figure he thinks, but they must look a little rough after a night spent on the hard ground.

“We do not,” Mike says softly. “But I believe he will want to see us regardless.”

The woman gives them a long look; Eddie gets the feeling he’s being carefully assessed. Then she stands and goes to the door behind her.

“Stanley,” she calls out, “You have visitors.”

“Coming darling!” a familiar voice calls out and Eddie barely has time to see his own surprise reflected on the faces of the others before Stan Uris walks into the room.

He must have still been preparing for the day ahead, judging from the way he’s buttoning his shirtsleeves, but when he sees who it is waiting for him, his hands fall to his side and his mouth drops open. There is a moment of absolute silence where nobody moves.

“Hiya Stan,” Bill says warmly. “It’s been a long time.”

Stan is silent, eyes darting from Bill to Mike to Eddie, and then back again like he isn’t sure that he’s got it right the first time.

“Stan?” the woman asks in concern, moving over touch his arm.

“Well,” Stan says finally. “It’s finally happened, after all this time. Have you folks had any breakfast?”

After that it’s a lot of talking and smiling and rushing around with teapots. By the time they’re all settled in the back parlour and eating slices of buttered toast, Stan is looking considerably less dazed. The receptionist, who has been revealed as Stan’s wife, introduces herself as Patty. She does most of the talking for them.

“I can’t believe I’m finally meeting the famous Bill Denbrough,” she says, looking a little flushed. “And Mike and Eddie of course- I’ve heard so much about you all. You can’t imagine how pleased I am to finally meet you all. I’ve heard the stories from my husband of course, but he does tend to focus on details and leave out all the excitement.”

She gives her husband a fond look as she says it, squeezing his hand.

Eddie smiles but inside, he’s wondering just how much she actually knew about Stan’s past. When he looks over at the others he can see they have the same question in their eyes.

As if sensing this, Stan clears his throat.

“My wife and I don’t keep secrets from each other,” he says in that familiar serious tone. “You can speak freely in front of her.”

Stan listens quietly as Bill laid out the situation in Derry and as he does, his face grows pale, but he doesn’t interrupt until Bill is finished. Having heard it just two days before, Eddie is more interested in watching Stan. In many ways, he looks just like the curly haired kid that Eddie remembers, but then again Stan had always seemed much older than he was, with his serious expression and lanky height. The only thing that had really changed was that he was wearing a nicer suit; tasteful but expensive judging from the fine stitching on the waistcoat.

When Bill was finished, Stan sat back on the sofa and looked for a long time at his hands, one thumb rubbing over the wedding ring.

“So you’ve come to ask me to go with you,” he says at last. “Is that it?”

Mike and Bill look at each other and then Mike shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “I mean, that was the plan. But now, considering your delicate state Mrs Uris, I don’t believe we can ask that of you.”

Stan nods but his face his torn. His wife however, isn’t so accepting.

“My delicate condition?” she asks, with an edge to her voice. “Don’t you think it’s for me to decide if I need my husband to stay? If this is something that needs to be done, I won’t stand in the way.”  
  


Stanley opens his mouth to object but then seems to think better of it.

“Maybe we could discuss it in the next room,” he says sweetly. “Gentlemen, would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Bill says, and the next half an hour passes with extreme discomfort as Stanley and his wife have an exceedingly polite and incredibly loud argument in the corridor outside. The three of them left in the parlour spend the time avoiding eye contact with one another and trying to pretend they can’t hear every word through the thin wall.

“What a nice view,” Bill says at one point, in a desperate attempt to distract. The effect is ruined somewhat by the fact he has to raise his voice to be heard over the din.

“Very nice,” Mike agrees but all Eddie can bring himself to do is nod glumly and take another bite of his toast.

Finally, Stanley and his wife re-enter the room, looking rather flushed and rumpled in way that suggests they’ve done a certain amount of making up after all the shouting.

Mike and Eddie stand up and Bill looks over expectantly from where he’s standing by the window.

“We have agreed,” Patty says firmly, “that Stanley shall accompany you, provided he’s back within a month’s time. I’m due, you see, in two.”

“That’s excellent news,” Mike says warmly. “But I’m sure it won’t take that long.”

“You say that,” Eddie says darkly. “But we still have to track down the others. And they could be anywhere.”

“The others?” Stan asks, frowning.

“Oh!” Patty says beside him, brightening up. “You mean Mr Tozier and Miss Marsh! Well that won’t be any trouble at all- we have them over for dinner all the time.”

There’s a moment of silence and then Bill and Mike both start talking at once.

“You’ve seen them?” Bill asks and in a similar tone Mike is saying, “What are they doing? How long have they been in the area?”

Eddie finds it suddenly very hard to say anything at all. There’s a strange rushing in his ears. All at once, he feels very tired and he sits down heavily on the sofa, staring at the tea-set.

All these years. All these years and Eddie had thought that Richie must have been long gone. Down south or riding through the swamps of Florida or even San Francisco maybe.

Not two days ride away.

He must have sat on this couch, Eddie thought, he must have used this damn teapot a thousand times. He had a sudden impulse to smash it.

When he looks up, Stan is giving him an odd look.

“You didn’t know?” he asks and there’s no mistaking that the question is directed at Eddie.

“No,” Eddie says hoarsely. “We…we haven’t kept in touch.”

He feels instantly stupid, because of course Stanley would know that already, wouldn’t he, if Richie and he were spending all this time together. He would know everything about Richie’s life now, all the long fifteen years of it that Eddie hadn’t been there for. Eddie feels a rush of anger towards Stanley and hates himself for it, because it isn’t deserved and Eddie has no right to be jealous, not over a person he hasn’t seen in nearly two decades.

“They’ve been living in the area a while now,” Patty is saying, and Eddie forces himself to tune back into the conversation. “Almost as long as us. They have a little cabin up in the mountains.”

“They’re uh, living together?” Bill asks, glancing over at Eddie who tries not to scowl.

“We don’t see them much during hunting season,” Stan says and then, in a rush as if to explain himself. “They really don’t come down here often. Just when they’re in town to sell pelts.”

There’s a strange tension in the room; Eddie’s aware that everyone aside from Patty is either looking at him or pretending not to. It’s infuriating.

“Well, let’s not waste time then,” Eddie says brusquely. “How soon can you be ready to leave Stan?”

In the end it takes a long time to get away, partly because Stan has so many arrangements to make about looking after the business in his absence, but mostly because Patty seems intent on giving them an inexhaustible supply of provisions for the journey.

Bill and Eddie try to tell her that they’re travelling light but in the end it’s Mike who talks her out of giving them a year’s supply of beef jerky and a new set of blankets each.

  
“Really miss,” Mike says gently. “We’re grateful but the horses can only carry so much.”

“Well if you’re absolutely sure,” Patty says reluctantly but there’s a look in her eye that implied that the horses were personally letting her down with this failure.

By the time they set out, it’s well into the afternoon but as Stanley tells them, they should be able to make it to the mountains by nightfall.

Rather than being reassured, Eddie finds this news somewhat alarming. He had been hoping for a journey of at least a few days to prepare himself; the thought of seeing Richie that very evening makes his stomach turn. He spends a long time fussing over Annabelle’s saddle before they leave.

While he does, he watches Stan and his wife as they say goodbye. He holds her for a long time and when he lets go, he does so reluctantly. When he’s saddled up and ready to go, Patty is smiling but there’s something forced about it.

“Take care of my husband,” she says to Bill. “I want him back in one piece, you hear?”

“We’ll keep him safe miss,” Bill says gravely, and he touches the brim of his hat. “I promise you that.”

Patty gives him a long considering look but then she nods.

As the four of them set out, Eddie looks back one last time and sees her standing there in the road, a solitary upright figure, waving goodbye.

Bill and Mike talk a lot on the winding ride up through the forest, but Stan and Eddie stay quiet. Stan presumably because of what he’s leaving behind and Eddie because of what lies ahead. The further up the mountain they go, the more he has to fight the impulse to turn back.

He tries not to wonder what Richie would look like. If he was still laughing at his own shitty jokes and wearing the same old flannel shirts that were always coming apart at the seams. If he still wore his hair a little too long.

The path gets narrower the further up they go and after a while they have to dismount and lead the horses by hand. It’s slow going and the light fades fast with the dark trees pressing in one either side.

Stan forges ahead, holding up a lantern to light the path. Behind him is Bill and then Mike. Eddie lingers at the back, watching his step on the rocky path.

Stan and Bill are talking in low voices up ahead but occasionally they call back to warn of some tricky part of the path. Eddie would be happy to be left alone, but Mike hangs back to talk to him.

“You alright?” he asks softly. “You’ve been real quiet today.”

“I’m fine,” Eddie says but then after a moment’s hesitation, he can’t hold it in anymore. “Actually, there is something bothering me.”

“Yeah?” Mike says, calm as ever.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Listen, if you knew where Stan was, why come to me first? Surely, I couldn’t have been the easiest person to track down- I’m barely in the same place for more than a day at a time. And don’t tell me it was a random decision.”

Mike is silent for a moment.

“It wasn’t random” he says finally. “Like I said, we thought Richie would be with you. Two birds with one stone. And if he wasn’t, well…”

“Well, what?”

“We thought that if we got you onboard early on, he would be more likely to come. Bill and Beverly and you all have family back in Derry. Stan has a sense of obligation. But Richie doesn’t have any reason to go back. Unless you’re going.”

Eddie feels himself go red and for a moment, he’s glad of the dark. “You’re making a mistake if you think he’ll follow me anywhere.”

“Maybe,” Mike says neutrally, “Maybe not.”

They walk in silence for a moment before something occurs to Eddie.

“Hey,” he says. “You weren’t on that list you gave. What’s your reason for going back?”

Mike shrugs. “It’s like I told you back in Augustville. Everything that happened back when we were kids…it needs to mean something. And besides, Bill’s going.”

Eddie opens his mouth to say, _I wish it could be that easy for me_ , but before he can, there’s a shout from up ahead.

When Eddie looks up, he sees smoke curling up over the treetops up ahead. The dark silhouette of a stone chimney against the purpling sky.

“I guess we’re here,” Mike says and Eddie nods, taking a deep breath.

There’s a small clearing outside the cabin where Stan and Bill are waiting with the horses, but Eddie lingers at the treeline. The cabin itself is small and wooden and has the slightly lopsided look of something that was made by someone with limited experience of making cabins. Nonetheless, it’s homely. There’s a glow in the windows that suggests a fire burning inside and a porch where someone has planted flowers.

Eddie doesn’t take in much beyond this though; all his attention on the figure leaning against the porch post. A tall man in hunting leathers, his hat tipped low over his face.

As Stan and Bill come to a halt the man looks up and, in an easy drawl, he says, “Now what brings two fine gentlemen like yourselves all the way up here on a night like this?”

You would think from the lit cigarette in his hand and the easy way the figure was slouching that you didn’t have to worry about the rifle by his side. But you’d be wrong; Eddie knew from experience just how fast Richie could draw a gun.

Stan however, fails to look impressed.

“Cut the dramatic bullshit Tozier,” he says, bringing the lantern up to his face. “It’s just me.”

“Who’s your friend?” Richie asks, but his grip relaxes slightly around the rifle. “Have you finally decided to set the law on me after all?”

“Not today,” Stan says, sounding a little regretful.

“It’s been a long time Richie,” Bill says.

For a moment Richie looks stunned, but he recovers quickly, a broad grin spreading across his face.

“Bill?” he asks and then he’s laughing. “Where the fuck did you come from? Have you got Mike with you?”

“He does,” Mike calls out from behind Eddie, and before Eddie can protest, there’s a strong hand on his back, pushing him out from under cover of the trees. “ And not just me.”

Richie takes a step down the porch smiling, until he sees who it is, at which point his face goes blank and he freezes in place.

“It’s been a long time Richie,” Mike says but whatever Richie was going to say, it comes out as a strangled sort of noise.

Eddie’s heart is beating so fast and hard, he can feel the thrum of it in his mouth. He wonders vaguely if he might have a heart attack, right here in the middle of nowhere.

It would be embarrassing, but on the other hand he might get lucky and die instantly.

“Hi Richie,” he says, and it comes out as a hoarse kind of whisper.

Richie says nothing.

After a second, Stan clears his throat pointedly.

Thankfully at that moment, the situation is saved from utter disaster by the sound of the cabin door creaking open.

“Richie?” a woman’s voice calls out. “Are you dead? Or do I have to shoot you myself for making me wait so long to eat?”

When Eddie drags his eyes away from Richie, a small woman wearing a man’s jacket is standing in the doorway, hair lit up like fire in the dying light.

“My god,” she says faintly. “Is that you Bill Denbrough?”

“Beverly!” Bill shouts and then everyone moves at once, shouting over each other, Bill rushing up the porch steps to wrap Beverly up in a broad hug.

Everyone that is, except Eddie and Richie who are left standing staring at each other in the middle of the chaos.

“So,” Eddie says, realising that one of them has to start talking or they’re just going to stand there for what could conceivably be the rest of their lives, “how are you?”

“How am I?” Richie echoes hollowly. “I don’t see you in fifteen years and that’s the best you can come up with?”

He steps forward, taking an angry drag of his cigarette. It’s too hard though and a still-burning chunk of ash falls onto his hand.

“Fuck!” Richie yelps, shaking it off and brushing at his shirt. When he looks up, all the colour has returned to his face, with some more thrown in for good measure.

“Still rolling them yourself?” Eddie asks before he can stop himself. It comes out a lot cattier than he had intended.

“Still married?” Richie snaps back, eyes narrowed.

Eddie flinches and opens his mouth to say something that would probably have started a fistfight if Beverly hadn’t at the moment come over to throw her arms around him.

“Eddie,” she says warmly. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Richie mutters, but Eddie ignores him, hugging Beverly back a little stiffly. He’s out of practice at being this close to people.

“Bev,” he says, muffled into her hair. “You look great.”

“You like the outfit?” she asks, pulling back to give him a twirl. “I call it backwoods couture.”

She’s joking but she really does suit the fringed leather and workman’s jeans, much better than the starched dress that Eddie had last seen her in.

“I do,” Eddie tells her. “But what the hell happened to you? I thought you were going off to be a lady of high society?”

“Oh _that_ ,” Bev says scornfully, waving her hand. “It’s a long story. Come on inside and warm up first.”

* * *

It’s not until the horses are put away for the night and they’re all settled in around the fireplace that Beverly tells it. They’ve managed to make a two-person meal feed six people, mostly with the help of the food that Patty had managed to stash in Stan’s saddlebags. Bottles of whiskey have been fished out of back-cupboards and dusted off.

It’s a small place and the main room doesn’t have much furniture; the room is dominated by a large padded armchair by the fire in which Beverly sits in with her feet tucked up under her. The rest of them have to had to make do with the small sofa and and creaky wooden chairs but somehow they’ve all managed to make themselves fit. The only notable exception is Richie who has taken up a spot leaning against the mantelpiece.

This is presumably to make it easier to chain-smoke. When Richie gets to the end of a stub, he tosses it casually into the grate before starting up another; a small pile has begun to accumulate by now. There’s something incredibly infuriating about the showy way he flicks them away with his finger and thumb. Eddie, who is squeezed onto the end of the sofa, watches this out of the corner of his eye and tries to take deep, calming breaths.

“When I left you, I had every intention of becoming respectable,” Beverly starts at last, the firelight flickering on her hair and making the soft curve of her cheek glow. “And for a little while I was. I used my share of the take to buy a dress making business in a nice, quiet little town. I wore my hair up. I even went to church. I met him there actually, in church, which looking back is almost funny because he was the most godless piece of shit to ever walk the earth.”

“Your husband?” Bill guesses and it’s tinged with something like regret. Beverly nods, looking into the fire.

“Yes,” she says simply. “Tom. On the day we got married, I took my guns and put them in a locked box under the bed.”

“I never figured you for the marrying type,” Mike observes. Eddie, who had been glaring at the cigarette in Richie’s hand, looks quickly away when Richie tries to give him a pointed look.

“I’m not it turns out,” Beverly says shortly. “I tried it for a while, it didn’t stick. I thought I was running away from my old life by marrying him. Turns out I was just repeating it.”

She touches the old scar on her lip absently.

“He hit you,” Stan says flatly. It’s not a question.

“Once,” Beverly says. “Just once.”

“You left him?” Eddie asks, thinking how strange it was that their lives had run on such parallel tracks.

“No,” Beverly says and then she smiles, teeth bared white in the dark. “I went up to my room, pulled that old box out from under the bed and I shot him dead.”

“Huh,” Eddie says, thinking, _okay maybe not that similar after all_. As far as he knew, Myra was still living alive and well back in Sweetwater. Probably still running that same damn apothecary.

“After that I gave up on being respectable,” Beverly says, suddenly cheerful again. “I rode out of town before the law could catch up and wandered around for a while, trying to pull our old tricks. Found out it’s much harder without anyone to watch your back. Then, somehow I ran into Richie in a poker game in some sleazy Montreal bar.”

“What were you doing playing poker in Montreal?” Eddie asks pointedly, shooting a dark look over in the direction of the fireplace. 

Richie smiles sweetly back at him.

“I was winning,” he says and lets out a puff of blue smoke.

_His mouth must taste like an ashtray,_ Eddie thinks with disgust and then goes red because he really should be past worrying about what Richie’s mouth tastes like.

“We worked as a team for a while, but it was mostly petty stuff,” Beverly goes on, not missing a beat. “Hold ups, cheating at cards. Didn’t take long for that to get boring and at that point we were starting to get more attention from the law than was ideal.”  
  


“So now what,” Mike asks. “You hunt?”

“You two always did have the best aim,” Bill says proudly. Richie preens a little and Eddie tries not to roll his eyes.  
  


At this point Richie clears his throat and straightens up a little.

“Listen,” he says. “It’s all very nice to get visits from old friends but I don’t think you all showed up after all this time just to talk about the old days. I think I’m speaking for Bev as well when I think it’s about time you told us just what the fuck is going on.” 

His eyes flick over at Eddie, so quickly that he might not even be aware he’s doing it.

Bill sighs and rubs a hand over his face.

“Okay,” he says. “But you’re not going to like it.”

This is the third time that Eddie’s heard Mike and Bill give this speech; it sounds a little rehearsed at this point. Eddie suspects that they had spent a long time trying to think of how to word it.

No matter how you put it, the idea of going back to Derry was a hard proposition to sell.

To his credit though, Richie lasts about five minutes into the explanation before exploding, which exhibits a lot more patience than Eddie was expecting.

“You want us to go _back_ to that cesspool?” he blurts out at one point, cutting Bill off mid- sentence. “Have you all lost your god-damned minds?”

“Richie, listen…” Mike starts, but Richie is wild-eyed, scrubbing one hand through his hair. It makes the dark curls stick up at strange angles; along with the strange flickering shadows cast by the fire, the overall effect is almost demonic.

“We barely escaped with our lives last time!” Richie snaps. “Hell, Bill, you were holding your guts in with your hands by the time we rode out of there!”

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Bill says with a hint of frustration. “But –“

“We should never have gone back the first time,” Richie says and he’s practically snarling now, his knuckles white from where he’s gripping the mantelpiece. “And now you want us to do it again? You’re gonna get us all killed Bill, and for what? A sense of duty? To a shitty little town that never did anything for us?”

“Georgie still lives there,” Bill says quietly and for a minute Richie flounders.

“Well he should move,” he says flatly and then turns to Stan. “You’re going along with this too? Weren’t you just telling us that you have a baby on the way? You’re supposed to be the sensible one Stan!”

Stan looks momentarily uncomfortable but then he shrugs. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Richie snorts in derision and looks over at Beverly for support. Beverly however, is watching the fire quietly. Her face is very still. 

“Bev?” Richie asks a little desperately.

“I guess part of me always knew this would come back to us one day,” she says softly. “Even when we rode out of there, I knew it wasn’t over. Something was unfinished.”

“Beverly, we don’t have to…It’s not our responsibility,” Richie tries to say but everyone in the room can see it; she’s made up her mind.

“I’m going with them,” she says softly. “You don’t have to though Richie.”

For a moment, Richie looks utterly betrayed and then his face hardens and, finally, he looks over at Eddie.

“You’re really doing this,” he says and it’s obvious that the words are aimed at Eddie alone.

Eddie swallows and nods. He’s not sure that he could talk, even if he could think of something to say.

Richie looks at him for a long moment and then lets out a strange, eerie kind of laugh.

“Right,” he says, brushing past Bill to the door. “Okay then. You’ve all gone fucking insane.”

“Richie, wait…” Mike says but Richie is already halfway out the door. Turning back for a moment, he gives them all a jaunty wave.

“It’s been just, such a pleasure seeing you all. We should do this again sometime,” he says and then the door is slamming shut behind him.

In the fresh silence, the rest of them look around at each other. Bill looks shaken and Mike upset, but Stan just rolls his eyes.

“He’s just being dramatic,” he says flatly. “He’ll come.”

Beverly shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him like this in a while.”

“Isn’t that more because of Ed-“Stan starts and then shuts his mouth with a snap, looking guiltily over at Eddie.

Eddie stands up abruptly.

“I’m going to check on the horses,” he announces, and then before any of them have a chance to say anything, he follows Richie out of the door.

Outside, he stands for a moment on the porch, closing his eyes. It’s dark out there, and very cold after the warmth of the cabin. He listens to his heartrate slow, his breath coming out in a white mist.

“They send you after me?” a voice asks and Eddie jumps.

“Jesus,” he snaps, holding a hand up to his chest. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Why are you lurking here?”

“It’s my porch,” Richie says, a little sulkily. “I can lurk on it if I want to.”

He’s just a dark shape leaning against the railing and Eddie shivers, wrapping himself up tighter in his jacket.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be so close,” he says. “I thought you would have stormed off into the woods by now.”

Richie snorts. “I might be pissed off, but I don’t want to get eaten by a bear.”

Eddie looked out into the dark trees a little nervously. “A lot of bears around here?”

“Thousands,” Richie drawls, taking out another cigarette from a little silver case. “Hungry ones.”

When he flares up a match to light it, his face is briefly illuminated. He looks older, Eddie thinks. There are more lines around his eyes and the lines of his face are harder they ever were before. Eddie drifts a little closer despite himself.

“That’s a filthy habit,” he says softly. “Those things will kill you.”

Richie laughs softly. “At this point it looks like I’ll outlive you all. You know if it’s like last time-“

“Maybe it won’t be,” Eddie says quickly. “We don’t know.”  
  


Richie is silent for a moment and then, bluntly, he asks, “Why are you really doing this Eddie? And don’t say it’s because your mother is still there because I know you don’t care about that. Has married life made you that suicidal already?”

Eddie opens his mouth to say, _I’m not married anymore idiot_ , but instead he hesitates, frowning.

“How do you know I got married anyway?” he asks suspiciously. “Stan didn’t know when I told him. Have you been keeping tabs on me?”

In the low light from the window, he sees a look of embarrassment cross Richie’s face.

“What, I can’t ask around for news about an old friend?” he says. “I heard it through the grapevine.”

“Bullshit,” Eddie snaps, losing his temper all at once. “I don’t _understand_ you Richie, I don’t understand you _at all_. I don’t see you for fifteen years and all that time you’ve been what, spying on me? Hiding away up here in the mountains? Why wouldn’t you come see me if you knew where I was?”

“I wasn’t…spying on you!” Richie splutters, stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette on the railing. “I wasn’t hiding either!”

“No,” Eddie spits out. “You weren’t. I guess you were perfectly happy seeing Stan every other week and playing house with Beverly. I guess it was just my company that wasn’t good enough-“

“What the fuck are you _talking about_?” Richie asks almost desperately. “Like you have any right to be jealous…”

“ _Jealous_?” Eddie repeats outraged, but Richie is barrelling on, like he’s been waiting a long time to say this and there’s no stopping now he’s started.

“What did you expect me to do Eddie, huh?” he asks loudly. “Hang around just on the off-chance your marriage might end?”

“I expected you to be there,” Eddie says raggedly, “Like you said you would. I _waited_ for you.”

Richie stops, taking in a sharp breath and Eddie watches him, wide eyed.

He’s suddenly intensely aware of the fact that there’s just one wall separating them from the others. They hadn’t quite been shouting but they certainly weren’t being quiet.

Not only that but they’ve moved in closer to each other. So close that Eddie can practically feel the heat coming off Richie’s body. 

The last time they had been this close, Richie had been kissing him goodbye. All at once, the memory comes Eddie so clearly it’s as if they had only just pulled apart. He wonders if maybe Richie is remembering too from the way his eyes flick down to Eddie’s mouth, so quick it could almost be imagined.

Then Richie is stepping away, taking a shaky breath.

“Well I’m sorry,” he says and then his voice turns hard and cold. “I guess I was just a little too late.”

Eddie can’t speak. Richie has retreated into the shadows again and when he speaks again, Eddie can’t make out the expression on his face.

“Don’t go back to Derry,” Richie says. For once he sounds deadly serious.

“I’m not asking you to come with us.”

“Do you want me there?”

“I won’t ask you,” Eddie says again, stubbornly. There’s a long pause.

“Fine,” Richie says at last. “Then go. See if I care. If you all want to die so badly then be my guest.”

“Fine,” Eddie says huffily and then, because he can’t think of anything else to say, he turns around and goes back inside.

There’s an awkward moment when he re-enters the room where everybody makes a sudden effort to sound like they weren’t listening, but he makes a valiant effort to ignore them.

Much later that night when most of them have fallen asleep on various uncomfortable position on the floor, Eddie hears the door creak open. He doesn’t open his eyes.


	3. High Noon

When they wake up the next morning Richie doesn’t join them for breakfast.

At first that casts a damper on the mood, but the coffee is good and after a while Beverly pulls out a map and an animated argument starts over the best route to Derry. Somehow Eddie ends up getting dragged in and after a while he’s deep in a shouting match with Stan over a potential shortcut they could take through a particularly treacherous pass. It’s a good distraction but even so, he finds he keeps looking over at the door to Richie’s room.

It stays firmly shut as they pack up and get ready to go. Before he leaves Eddie gives it one long last look. He thinks about saying goodbye but in the end he just turns away.

When he walks out, the first thing he sees is Richie saddling up a large roan horse.

When Eddie opens his mouth, Richie just gives him a dirty look.

“Don’t say a word,” he says. “I’m not doing it for you.”

Eddie doesn’t smile but the corner of his mouth twitches up. Beverly brushes past him on her way out and as she does, Eddie could swear he hears her mutter _for God’s sake_ under her breath.

* * *

Despite the tension of last night and their grim destination, everyone seems in a fairly good mood as they set out. Eddie rides up ahead with Bill and Stanley, who spends most of the morning happily pointing out various types of birds. Every so often he sees one so exciting that he pulls out a small notebook and scribbles down a note to himself.

“It’s for Patty,” Stan explains when Eddie asks him about it. “We’re planning on making a study at some point of all the different species in the region.”

“Your idea?” Eddie asks, trying not to sound too dubious.

“Hers,” Stan says happily, looking at the notebook. “Why?”

“Nothing,” Eddie says, smiling. “Just happy you two found each other.”

At first Richie seems to be set on spending the whole trip in a stony silence, as if to signal his disapproval. It’s not long though before he gets involved in some complicated discussion Mike and Beverly seem to be having about bookbinding, and then after that he seems to forget that he was supposed to be in a bad mood at all.

At one point, Eddie looks over at Bill and sees that he’s looking around at all of them with this faint little smile. Eddie knows what he’s thinking, and he feels it too; it’s a strange feeling to be riding together like this again. A good feeling. 

Only one thing is missing and even if they all feel the absence, Beverly is the one to voice it.

“I wish Ben was here,” she says later that day, when they’ve stopped to eat lunch in a shady clearing. “He must not have got your telegram Bill- I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t write back at least.”

“Maybe he’s busy,” Mike says, ever diplomatic. “Wasn’t he planning on going into construction?”

“It’s a lot of work building the civilized world from the ground up,” Richie says. “Plus there’s probably a lot of fancy restaurants and showgirls in the city to keep him occupied.”

“Hmm,” Beverly says.

She doesn’t sound too happy about it but Eddie’s not really paying attention. He’s too busy reading Bill’s book, sitting with his back against a large ash tree.

As sceptical as he was at first, he’s been sucked in by the story pretty quickly after picking it up. Eddie’s just reached the part where a lone gunman faces off against a whole saloon of bandits when a shadow falls across his page.

“Could you loom somewhere else?” he asks crossly when he looks up. “You’re in my light.”

“Good book?” Richie asks, not moving.

“It’s alright,” Eddie says slowly, wondering whether there’s a point to this or if Richie’s just decided to annoy him out of boredom.

“What’s it about?” Richie persists.

“What?” Eddie snaps. “You want me to read it to you?”

“Would you?” Richie asks sweetly and Eddie puts the book down and glares up at him.

  
“You know,” he says. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk.”

Richie shrugs easily. “Suit yourself,” he says and then wanders off, presumably to find someone else to annoy. Eddie tries to go back to the page, but he’s lost the thread of the plot now and after he re-reads the same paragraph three times he gives up in disgust.

It will take three days to reach Derry. If they can make it that long without killing each other then it will be a miracle. Eddie makes a silent resolution to avoid talking to Richie as much as possible; if nothing else then for the sake of group morale.

This resolution lasts till about evening.

They’ve already eaten their evening meal, and the others are talking low around the fire when Richie volunteers to wash up their pans in the nearby stream.

Eddie sits and tries to listen to the others, but he keeps looking over and finally he can’t take it anymore. He gets up and walks over the short distance to the stream and then what he sees is so horrifying he forgets the silent treatment altogether.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asks, so loudly that some of the others back at the fireplace look over in surprise.

“Um,” Richie says, looking down at the pan and then up at Eddie like he’s an idiot. “Washing up?”

“Without soap?” Eddie asks, feeling a little hysterical. “Do you know how many parasites there are in these streams?”

“No,” Richie says bluntly. “Do you?”

“Thousands,” Eddie spits out, even though he isn’t actually sure if this is true. “And now they’re gonna be on every single pan, plate and fork we eat with.”

“What are you talking about?” Richie asks, brow furrowed up. “I saw you drinking from this stream just earlier today.”  
  


“That was in daylight,” Eddie says, trying to be patient. “When I could check the water quality.”

“Well I’m not wasting my soap on pans.”

“You only have the one bar?” Eddie asks, genuinely upset, and then he shakes his head. “Just...just hold on a minute.”

He goes over to the camp and roots around in his saddlebags until he finds what he’s looking for. When he looks up Bill is giving him an odd look.

“What?” Eddie snaps but Bill just smiles.

“I didn’t say anything,” he says, and Eddie gives him a dirty look before going back to Richie.

“Here,” he says, planting himself down and dumping out what’s in his hands onto the grass between them. “Use some of this.”

Richie looks surprised and then very quickly amused.

“What the hell?” he says mildly. “You carry all of this stuff around? There’s like five different bars here Eddie…”

He picks one up and gives it a sniff.

“That one’s not for dishes,” Eddie says quickly. “That’s for clothes.”

“Why does it smell like lavender?” Richie asks, grinning.

“That was the only type they had at the store,” Eddie lies, and then picks up a larger bar. “Use this one for plates.”

“You aren’t going to help me?” Richie asks. “Since you’re the expert?”

Eddie hesitates but then he picks up a plate.

“Fine,” he says. “But only because I don’t want us to all get dysentery.”

“God forbid,” Richie says gravely but when Eddie looks at him out of the corner of his eye, he’s smiling.

After that, things get a little easier between them.

Over the next couple of days, whether by coincidence or design, Richie is always somehow next to Eddie as they ride along the trail. It’s a long boring ride now they’ve left the mountains behind and it would be rude not to talk now they seem to have come to some kind of unspoken truce. Or so at least, Eddie tells himself.

The truth is, he had missed talking to Richie. Missed the long endless circular arguments over nothing and the same old stupid jokes that Richie seemed to tell only to make Eddie roll his eyes. Richie seemed to have an endless supply of stories about what he had been doing for the last fifteen years, most of which Eddie suspects are made up. It seemed doubtful that Richie had actually won quite so many duels as he claimed.

It was difficult though, to talk about the past; there were so many subjects that were too raw, too tender to touch.

Richie never talked about what he had done before meeting up with Beverly in Montreal. In return, Eddie never spoke about his marriage. Eddie wasn’t sure how much Richie knew about it. He must suspect from the lack of a wedding ring that Eddie’s wife was long gone. But still, he never asked directly and for his part Eddie avoided the topic altogether.

The only time they came close to it was on the second day, when they had stopped to refill their water pouches at a small, fast-running spring in a meadow. It was a warm day and all of them were sluggish and bad tempered with the heat. Stan in particular was very moody, although Eddie suspected that it was in part because there were far less birds to be found now that they had left the forest.

  
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bedroll,” Richie mutters to Eddie as the two of them watch Stan glare at his horse, who had the audacity to be peacefully eating a patch of grass.

“Maybe he’s missing his wife,” Eddie says and then wishes he hadn’t.

“Hmm,” Richie says grumpily, and then after a moment the awkward silence is suddenly filled with the ear-splitting sound of a gun going off at close range.

“What the fuck?” Eddie yelps, stumbling back and looking at Richie whose gun is in his hand and smoking. “Did you just try and _shoot me_?”

“No, you idiot,” Richie says and then nudges something lying in the dirt. “Look.”

There’s a snake lying there in the dirt; or rather there are two halves of a snake. Even without getting any closer Eddie can see the dark stripes on its scaly back.

“Looks like a timber rattler,” Richie says airily, as if he wasn’t talking about one of the deadliest snakes in North America.

“You couldn’t have just warned me?” Eddie asks, pulse still rocketing. “With your goddamn _words_?”

“I’m so sorry,” Richie says sarcastically. “Next time I’ll just let you find out when it bites you on the ankle.”

It’s not until Eddie has got back on Annabelle and is riding off in a huff, that he realizes what an impressive piece of shooting it was. Not only to draw that quickly but to hit such a small moving target in the grass. He doesn’t tell Richie that of course, but he does cool off after an hour and start talking to him again.

He tries not to think about the fact that this just added to the long list of times that Richie had saved his life.

* * *

T _he first time had been in a summer just like this one; so hot and humid that Eddie’s shirt had stuck to his skin and he had woken up every morning with a headache from the thirst. Of all the summers of Eddie’s life, he remembers this one the clearest._

_It was the summer the Denbrough gang robbed their first bank._

_The job had been a disaster from the beginning. Badly planned and rushed, they had gone in too hot and found more far more guns waiting for them than cash. In the end they had to shoot their way out and somehow in the chaos Eddie had managed to catch a bullet to the arm._

_Later he found out that despite of landing just shy of his heart, it had been more of a flesh wound than anything. At the time he had been just nineteen and sure he was going to die right there in the street. The sight of blood had been frightening; Eddie had never seen so much of it before. He had frozen up and if Richie hadn’t dragged him onto the back of a horse and gotten them out, then Eddie might have just given up there and then and let himself be caught or killed._

_Later on, when they were clear, they had a screaming argument about it, though looking back Eddie was sure that Richie had been just as frightened as Eddie was, judging from the look on his face._

_Before then, they had never touched each other before. Just looked and tried to pretend they weren’t looking. There were some things more frightening than blood. As a result, although the two of them danced around it, nothing had been said out loud until that point._

_Whether it was the brush with death that made those fears suddenly seem unimportant, Eddie wasn’t sure. Maybe they had just been leading to it for a long time. Whatever it was, the thing that had been simmering between them for so long had finally boiled over._

_But for all that Eddie remembers that summer so clearly, the only thing he’s unsure of is which of them was the first to cross that invisible line._

_Had Richie kissed him first? He always was the braver one. Most of the time Eddie is sure that’s how it happened. Other times, though he thinks that maybe he had kissed Richie first. That he had been the one stepping just that one inch closer, the one reaching out._

_Eddie tries not to think about it too much though. In the end, he guessed it didn’t matter who had started it. Richie had been the one to end it._

* * *

By the third day, the sun isn’t shining anymore but if anything, the heat has thickened, and the air feels heavy around them. There’s a strange yellowness to the clouds and big dark flies bother the horses. The landscape feels more exposed now they’ve left behind the mountains and even though the countryside around them is at the height of its summer bloom, there’s something sickly about the smell of it, like overripe fruit left to rot on the branch.

Eddie knows he isn’t the only one who can feel it, the way the sky seems to press down on them the closer they come to Derry. They still talk amongst themselves, but the conversation is halting; everyone seems distracted somehow and Eddie notices that Beverly has one hand on the gun belt at her waist.

Around midday at the peak of the heat, they come to a crossroads. A large oak tree spreads its branches over the road.

There is a corpse hanging from a low branch. By the state of him he looks to have been swaying there for quite some time. Someone has stripped him of his boots; his bare feet are a deep dark purple.

Eddie pulls up his scarf to breathe through it; he has a sudden irrational fear that the decay will enter his lungs somehow if he breathes too deeply.

“Well,” Richie drawls. “Isn’t that just lovely?”

The words are casual enough but when Eddie looks over, his hands are fisted tightly where they grip the reins of his horse.

“How far are we from Derry?” Stan asks, looking pale. “Could this be the Bower’s doing?”

“Could have been anyone,” Beverly says tightly. “Could have been the law.”

“You don’t hang a man at a crossroads unless you’re making an example of him,” Mike says quietly.

“Or marking the bounds of your territory,” Richie says and then he points to a small sign, almost hidden in the shadow of the tree. “See that? Ten miles to Derry.”

None of them suggest cutting him down to see if he has anything in his pockets that would give some clue. After a moment, Bill silently spurs his horse on. The others follow him and soon the oak tree is just a distant dark shape in the distance behind them.

Eddie feels shaken; he can’t stop checking the gun at his belt. The only thing he’s brought with him is a six-shot revolver and the Remington rifle, stowed away in his saddle. He’d rather not use them if he has to.

Eddie’s shot off a lot of warning shots in his time on the road, but he hasn’t killed anybody since the last time he was in Derry.

“You alright?” he hears Bill ask Stan up ahead, so quietly that Eddie feels a little bad for overhearing.

Stan takes a moment to respond and when he speaks, his voice is so soft that Eddie has to strain to hear.

“What if it’s like last time Bill?”

* * *

_They had ridden down this same road fifteen years ago but back then, they had no way of knowing what was waiting for them. They had all heard the rumours of what had happened to Derry, of course they had, it was the reason they were returning. But most of them thought that the stories were exaggerated._

_They were wrong._

_If anything, the stories of what was happening in Derry barely touched upon the truth. The town they returned to was very different from the one they had grown up in. In their absence a new sheriff had taken over and under his authority the Bower’s gang had been given a free run over the town._

_They had always been stupid and violent, but unrestrained they turned cruel and vicious. They spent most of their days drinking in the saloon and starting fight. At night they would go out looking for fun, which in their case could mean anything from burning down houses to taking pot-shots at stray dogs. If they wanted something then they took it, killing anyone that got in their way, without hesitation or remorse. The new sheriff never moved a finger to stop the carnage. Instead he sat watching it all from a rocking chair he had pulled out onto the front porch of his office; a tall, thin man who smiled a lot._

_Eddie remembers the smile even now; it was a dead thing’s smile. It stretched over the sheriff’s face like an open wound._

_By the time Bill and the other returned, the fields around Derry had been burning and there were days-old corpses lying forgotten in the dust of the street. No one had seemed to pay any attention to them as they rode up the main street and at first sight, it had seemed abandoned._

_It wasn’t long till they found they found out what lay behind closed doors._

_When they did, it wasn’t long before the town became a bloodbath._

_They never once discussed a plan of action but between them they went through the town in a cold rage, gunning down every gang member they saw. The weeks of excess must have made the Bowers gang lazy (or maybe Bill and the others just caught them off-guard) but as it was, by the time they got to the sheriff’s office, no one was standing in their way._

_No one, that was, except Old Man Bower’s himself, a deputy’s badge gleaming on his jacket. He was faster than a man of his age should be, fast enough to gut Bill like a fish with a hunting knife._

_Mike was the one to gun him down in the end, his face a blank mask of pure anger where he was crouched down in the street with Bill bleeding into his lap._

_When it was all over there had been a horrible silence, filled only the creak of the sheriff’s rocking chair. The seven of them of them had stood there in the street and watched him laugh, mouth cracked open like a snake’s unhinged jaw. He had kept on laughing, even as Beverly had stepped forward and unloaded five shots into his twitching body._

_Sometimes Eddie thinks he might have gone on laughing after that, that he might have been laughing even as his body cooled. That he might have gone on laughing, long after they had left._

_But maybe that was just how it went in Eddie’s nightmares._

* * *

“It won’t be like last time,” Bill says firmly. “This time we know better.”

“Maybe,” is all Stan says. “Maybe.”

Not long after that, they reach the crest of a hill and looking over they can see the town stretched below them in all its spreading, rancid glory.

Derry. They line up in silence to look at it.

“Home sweet home,” Richie says in a hollow voice.

“It looks…” Eddie starts and then he trails off.

The crops around Derry are yellowing but they’re untouched. Unlike the last time they were here, there’s no smoke rising from the buildings. The canal is a big green ribbon cutting through the dusty town centre. From this distance it could be any other small sleepy Maine town.

“It looks normal,” Richie finishes for him and they share an uneasy glance.

“So, what’s the plan,” Beverly says quietly. “Should we make camp and scout around tomorrow morning?”

Stan makes an unhappy noise. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t plan on staying around any longer than we have to.”  
  


Mike nods. “Today seems as good a day as any. I say we ride right in. Worked well enough last time.”

“Did it?” Eddie hears Richie mutter under his breath.

“We don’t all need to go,” Bill says firmly. “Might be good to have a few folks back here in case something goes wrong.”

There’s a brief silence.

Bill is giving them an out, Eddie knows, but no one seems to want to take it.

That’s not entirely true. Eddie would love nothing more than to not ride down into Derry; but the thought of being left up here alone, watching the others go in without him is far worse.

“If I was gonna turn tail it would have been when we met our friend back in the tree,” Richie says. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The rest of them nod and Bill gives them all a long, considering look, his eyes lingering on Stanley who looks very pale, sitting upright and stiff in his saddle.

Finally, he nods.

“Alright,” he says simply. “Together then.”

* * *

As they ride down into town, more signs of life start to appear, but Eddie’s sense of unease lingers. There are people working the fields but there’s a listlessness to the way they move. A kid sitting on a fence watches them pass with dull unseeing eyes; there’s a strange unhealthy tinge to his skin that makes Eddie think of tuberculosis, cholera, smallpox. That same, rotting smell is stronger now and the buzzing of the flies is a constant. A solitary half-starved horse grazes uselessly in a patch of hard baked dirt.

The first houses they pass are silent and empty; a few people watch from the windows, but no one calls out as the six of them ride past.

They pass one small house coming up to the main street and for some reason it catches Eddie’s eye.

He cranes his neck to watch it as they pass. It’s just another white house with dark windows. It isn’t until he catches Richie looking at him that he remembers.

* * *

_They had been there before. Last time._

_They had split up to look around, which just went to show their foolishness. As usual Richie and Eddie had been together. It had been the first house they had entered. By sheer luck they had managed to surprise three gang members who were sitting around playing cards around a kitchen table. Richie had held them at gunpoint while Eddie checked the back rooms._

_That was where he found the original residents. A family. Their bodies had been stacked on top of each other like kindling. The smallest child, a little girl, was still holding her mother’s hand._

_Eddie had looked at them for a moment and then he had gone back into the room where the gang members were still sitting around the table._

You alright? _Richie had asked but Eddie hadn’t been able to answer. His gun was already out and somehow, he found that he was pointing at the head of one of the gang members, a man with long dark hair that fell in greasy chunks over his face._

You won’t shoot a man without a gun in his hand _, the man had tried to say but he had never finished the sentence._

_Eddie shot him twice and put two bullets in each of his friends. He kept going after that, the hammer clicking uselessly, until at last Richie told him that it was over, that they were dead and he could stop._

* * *

Eddie forces himself to look away, to focus on the road ahead. They were coming up to the main street now; he couldn’t afford to be distracted. Even so, there’s a bitter taste in his mouth and his fingers twitch at the phantom feeling of a trigger.

At the other end of the street is the sheriff’s office. On the porch a figure is sitting with a gun across his knees. For an awful moment, Eddie is sure that it’s the corpse of the old sheriff, left out to dry and still waiting for them after all these years. Then they get a little closer and he sees it’s just a man. A slouched, unshaven man with an angry look in his eyes, but just a man, nonetheless.

“Not much of a welcome party,” Richie says but he quiets down the minute Bill holds his hand up for them to stop.

The man on the porch doesn’t get up. Eddie isn’t too sure he’s aware of their arrival. His eyes are lidded and if it weren’t for the way his fingers are curled around the barrel of the gun in his hands, Eddie wouldn’t be sure if he was even alive.

When he finally speaks, the words come out slurred, almost drunken.

“You folks have a lot of nerve riding back in here,” he says, without moving.

“You the sheriff?” Bill asks.

“Just the deputy,” the man drawls and one dirty finger comes up to tap at a tarnished silver star on his lapel. “Names Bowers. Henry Bowers. Recognise that name?”

Eddie draws in a sharp breath. Mike has gone very still.

“We remember,” Bill says simply.

“You also remember gunning my father down?” Bowers asks. “Leaving him to die like a dog in the street?”

He turns his head and spits out something thick and brown onto the boards by his feet. Eddies tries not to gag.

“Your father was a bad man,” Mike says. “He deserved everything he got.”

They all stiffen up and Eddie sees both Beverly and Richie reach for their guns, but Henry Bowers just laughs.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe he did. We all get what we deserve in the end. Those were bad days. Things ain’t like that now.”

“If that’s true, we have no quarrel with you,” Bill says. “We just heard some things that’s all. Wanted to see if they were true.”

Bowers laughs. The sound is utterly unpleasant.

“Well as you can see, Derry is doing just fine without you,” he says. “It doesn’t need a gang of outlaws to ride in and shoot it up again”

“That’s not what happened! “ Richie says hotly but Eddie shoots him a warning glance and he shuts up.

“-so I’ll ask you all to be on your way,” Bowers says smoothly, as if there had been no interruption. “If you would be so kind.”

He smiles and Eddie suddenly becomes aware of more eyes watching them from the windows. The sunlight catches on a flash of steel in a dark doorway.

“They’ve got guns on us,” he murmurs to Richie, who nods, eyes narrowed.

“Stay close,” is all he says, out of the corner of his mouth. “There’s about ten by my count.”

Bill seems to have realised it too from the way he holds up his hands in surrender.

“Alright,” he says. “We’ll go. Like I said, we’re not looking for trouble.”

Bowers nods, eyes dead as a lizard above his smile.

“One more thing,” Beverly calls out, before they go. Eddie looks over at her startled.

“What’s that miss?” Bowers asks with an oozing solicitude.

“I’m wondering,” Beverly asks, eyes narrowed. “What’s his name? How long has he been around for?”

Henry Bowers looks at her dumbly for a moment with his mouth hanging open and then he lets out a sharp bark of a laugh.

“Hell, he never left,” he says. “But he’ll appreciated you asking after him though miss. I’m sure he’ll come and find you all soon enough.”

Beverly goes pale.

“No,” she says faintly. “I shot that man five times. He’s dead.”

“Should have shot him six!” Henry Bowers says, voice high and manic. “Should’ve shot him six!”

The sound of his laughter follows them down the street as they leave.


	4. Dances With Wolves

Eddie practically holds his breath until they get to the outskirts of town. As soon as they’re clear, he twists in his seat to look over at Richie riding beside him.

“We’re not actually leaving though, are we?” he asks.

“No,” Richie says, not looking too happy about it. “Not if I know Bill.”

Sure enough, Bill only leads them for about a mile before stopping by a large grove of trees out by a small creek. The trees are dense enough to hide all of them and the horses, with room to spare, but Eddie still feels uneasy being so close to the town.

“Were we followed?” Beverly asks as she hops down lightly from her horse. “Did anyone see?”

“I wasn’t looking back,” Richie says, shuddering. “That place is just as fucked up as I remember.”

“It’s diseased,” Eddie says, feeling shaky as he dismounts. “You could feel it in the air. Like a plague pit.”

For once, no one calls him paranoid. Stanley even nods in agreement.

“Not as bad as last time though,” Mike says. “Maybe Bowers wasn’t lying. Maybe it really has changed.”

“We saw it for all of five minutes!” Richie protests, and Bill looks thoughtful.

“You’re right,” he says. “We need more information. We’ll make camp and scout around tomorrow.”

Beverly very kindly doesn’t point out that was her idea in the first place. Eddie isn’t sure if she’s even listening to the conversation. Her eyes keep drifting off in the direction of Derry.

* * *

They argue for a long time that night over whether to set up a campfire. Stan and Mike are convinced that the risk of the smoke revealing their location is too high. Bill and Beverly are stubborn in their belief that it doesn’t matter.

“We aren’t hiding,” Beverly says darkly. “Let them come.”

Richie doesn’t have much of an opinion beyond not wanting to eat cold food and Eddie…well Eddie just doesn’t like the idea of spending a night in darkness.

They light a fire in the end and by the time the sun has fully set, even Mike and Stan seem glad to sit around it. Eddie can’t help but notice the circle is clustered a little more tightly than usual, especially for such a warm night.

“He must be lying,” Mike says, staring at the flames. “About the sheriff. We all saw it Beverly. He was dead.”

Beverly just scowls down at the gun parts she has spread out in front of her on the blanket. She’s been obsessively cleaning it for the last hour now.

“I don’t know,” she says. “There’s something not right about Derry.”

“Something evil,” Stan agrees in a low tone. “Did you notice how quiet it was when we rode in? No birdsong.”  
  


“It’s always been like that,” Mike says. “Even when we were kids.”

Eddie shivers from where he’s sitting with his knees drawn up. Across the fire Richie is scowling down at a deck of cards in his hands. He hasn’t talked much since they got here. From him, the silence is more worrying than anything else that’s happened today.

“I don’t like it as much as any of you,“ Bill says. “But it’s still just a town.”

“No,” Richie says with something like anger in his voice. “It’s not. Eddie was right when he said it was sick… It ruins every good thing it touches. Look at what happened to us. We had a good thing going for a while back there. But then we came back here. If it wasn’t for Derry…”

He trails off and there’s a heavy silence. Eddie feels raw, exposed and he’s sure it must show in his face. He can’t shake the feeling that Richie is talking directly to him.

“It had to end sometime Richie,” Stan says bluntly. “We had to grow up. It couldn’t have stayed the same forever.”

“Why? Why couldn’t it have stayed the same?” Richie says hotly but when he looks up, he isn’t looking at Stan. He’s looking at Eddie.

“People change,” Eddie tells him, and the words sound familiar in his mouth. “They want different things.”

“What,” Richie asks contemptuously. “Like settling down and doing honest work? Like getting married?”

“Like not getting shot at all the time!” Eddie snaps and when Bill tries to interject, Eddie keeps on talking right over him. “Like being in one place for more than a week! Like hot baths and clean clothes. Those aren’t stupid things to want Richie!”

“Maybe we should all cool off,” Mike suggests and Eddie and Richie’s turn in unison to glare at him.

Up until that moment Eddie had almost forgotten the others were there. 

“I’m cool,” Richie says lightly and goes back to his cards.

It would be more believable if he hadn’t crushed the ace of spades in his hand. For whatever reason, watching Richie attempt to smooth out the creases with his long fingers is the final straw for Eddie, who stands up abruptly, feeling the blood rush in his ears.

He mumbles some excuse about checking the perimeter but when he gets away and into the dark trees, he keeps going, stumbling through the underbrush. Finally, he gets far away enough that he can barely see the glow of the campfire through the branches and only then does he stop and try and take a full breath.

All he can think of is the unfairness of it all. Richie has no right to be angry.

Eddie hadn’t even been the first to leave.

That had been Beverly, but even she had just been the first to act on something they had all been feeling. They couldn’t have gone back to killing and stealing again, not after what they had seen in Derry.

Sure, Eddie had left not long after, but he had never intended to leave Richie along with it.

They had made a deal (or so Eddie had thought). They had a plan. Eddie would settle down in Sweetwater and work on setting up a ranch. In six months or so, whenever Richie was done living out his glory days, Richie would join him there.

Eddie had carried out his part of the bargain. After they parted ways he had gone to Sweetwater and settled down to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And finally, after three years of waiting, he knew that no matter what Richie had promised, he wasn’t coming. Had maybe never planned on coming at all.

Out here in the dark and stillness Eddie’s starting to feel a little embarrassed. Stupid to still be storming off like he was eighteen. _Very stupid_ to be pulling theatrics when they were so close to Derry and the woods could be swarming with member of the Bowers Gang.

The thought of that dispels a lot of the residual anger and Eddie starts to think maybe the embarrassment of going back to camp would be preferable to being alone out here in the dark.

He’s about to head back when the sound of a twig snapping makes him freeze. He feels for his gunbelt and feels a sudden sinking in his stomach when his fingers close around empty air.

There’s the rustling sound of something large and close.

“Who is it,” Eddie asks in a cracked sort of whisper. “Come out or I’ll shoot!”

“How are you going to shoot me with no gun?” Richie asks, emerging from behind a tree. “You left it at the campsite idiot.”

In the faint moonlight Eddie can see he looks grumpy and disordered. Quite a lot of foliage seems to have attached itself to his clothes and hair.

“Have you just come all the way out here to tell me that?” Eddie says, folding his arms and trying not to sound embarrassed.

“I wouldn’t have had to, if you hadn’t wandered off on your own unarmed.”

“Well give it back and save yourself the concern,” Eddie says and holds out his hand.

Richie gives it a blank look.

“Well?” Eddie asks. “Where is it?”

“Back at the campsite,” Richie says slowly, as if he’s talking to a child. “Obviously.”

For a moment Eddie is so annoyed he loses the ability to form words. Richie pulls out a cigarette from seemingly nowhere and sticks it in his mouth.

“Would you stop that?” Eddie asks, hearing his voice come out low and dangerous.

“Stop what sorry?” Richie asks, frowning and lighting up a match with a scratch.

The smell of sulfur sets off some strange chemical reaction in Eddie’s brain and before he can stop himself, he’s reaching out to pull the unlit cigarette from Richie’s mouth.

“ _Stop fucking smoking_ ,” he hears himself say but Richie has caught his wrist in one large hand.

Eddie opens his mouth with the intention of snapping at him to let go, but to his surprise he finds that all at once, rather than shouting at Richie, he’s kissing him. He can’t tell which one of them moved first but it doesn’t seem important. All at once, the only thing that seems to matter is that they get closer.

“You’re so bossy,” Richie tells him in a gasp when they pull apart. “Eddie what-“

“Shhh,” Eddie says desperately and kisses him again before Richie has a chance to say anything.

Eddie is intensely aware that if either of them says anything right now, if they so much as pause, the spell will be broken, and they’ll have to address just whatever the fuck is happening. Eddie can’t let that happen, not when Richie is so close and warm, not when he’s been aching for this ever since he had seen Richie leaning up against the goddamn porch that first night.

Richie seems to have no objections, judging from the way he pushes Eddie up against a tree trunk. One of his hands is curled around Eddie’s hip, already worming its way under his shirt. The other is on Eddie’s chin, tipping his head at just the right angle to kiss.

It’s rough and not at all gentle and the feel of Richie’s big hands are enough to drive Eddie crazy just from this. He had forgotten what it felt like, to be manhandled like this, to know that someone wants him this badly.

He fists his hands in Richie’s shirt and pulls him closer, breaking away from Richie’s mouth to lick at the exposed skin of his neck. It tastes like sweat and Eddie knows he should be disgusted, because they’ve both been on the trail in the heat all day and god knows when Richie had washed before that, but instead he just wants more. He wants to bite down, to leave some mark so that Richie wouldn’t forgot when this was all over.

Richie moans and Eddie brings up his hand to cover his mouth, shushing him.

  
“The others,” he manages to get out and then he gasps when Richie finally manages to unbutton Eddie’s pants and slides his hand inside.

“Oh fuck,” Eddie says and jerks his head back so fast he knocks it against the hard bark behind him. “Ow. Oh god, oh fuck.”

“Who’s being noisy now?” Richie asks with a low laugh. Eddie can’t answer. His body feels like a live wire; every part of his skin exposed to the night air prickles. It’s almost too much and at the same time, he never wants it to stop.

Richie leans in and kisses him and Eddie’s grateful because otherwise he’s pretty sure he would be babbling right now. Even though they’re both fully clothed Eddie can feel the heat of Richie’s body where they’re pressed together. From this angle Eddie can’t reciprocate, can’t do much more than clutch at the back of Richie’s jacket and kiss him, over and over, almost desperately.

When he feels his orgasm get close, he has to bury his face in Richie’s shoulder just to stifle the noises. Richie is talking low into his ear when he comes, saying things like, “shh” and “that’s it, that’s good isn’t it?”

If Eddie had any more control now he might find that annoying, because of course obviously it was good, it was fucking _amazing_ , it was the best thing to happen to Eddie’s dick in fifteen years, but instead he grits his teeth and comes, almost weeping, with his head buried in the crook of Richie’s neck.

When he finally stops shaking, Richie pulls away and kisses one last time on the mouth. It’s a gentle kiss, almost chaste and for maybe for that reason it scares Eddie more than all the others put together.

For a moment they just look at each other. It’s hard to make out Richie’s face in the dark but Eddie thinks he might be smiling.

“Feeling better?” Richie asks in a whisper. “If I’d known that’s what it takes to calm you down…”

“Oh, shut up,” Eddie says and then he’s twisting them around, so Richie is the one up against the tree.

“Wait,” Richie says. “Eddie you don’t have to-“

But Eddie is already sinking to his knees in front of him, his hands on Richie’s belt.

“What,” he asks, looking up with a sharp grin. “You want me to stop?”

“…No,” Richie says after a moment, in a thin strained voice. “No, you can keep going.”

“You going to say please?” Eddies asks sweetly.

“Fuck you,” Richie gasps and Eddie laughs and does it anyway.

* * *

When it’s over and Richie is trying to catch his breath above him, Eddie leans against his leg and laughs quietly to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Richie asks. “Has no one ever told you it’s rude to laugh when someone’s dick is out?”

“It’s not that,” Eddie says. “I was just worried I might have forgotten how to do that,”

Richie lets out a shaky laugh and then pulls Eddie up to kiss him. Eddie lets it happen, melting into his chest. There’s a spreading warmth in his chest and Eddie wonders if it’s purely the post-orgasm glow.

“I guess this is one part of the adventure you won’t be writing home to your wife about,” Richie says after a moment. His chin is resting on the top of Eddie’s head and his voice is a low rumble.

“Huh?” Eddie says, genuinely confused for a moment before remembering. “Oh. I think she’s beyond caring about that.”

Richie draws back to look at him; even in the dark Eddie can see he looks startled.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. Is she…did she pass away?”

“What? No,” Eddie says quickly. “She’s still alive. Or at least, I think she is. Last I heard she’s settled down with some banker back in Sweetwater.”

“You aren’t _married anymore_?” Richie, hitting a weird pitch with the last word. “When did this happen?”

“Years ago,” Eddie says. “I thought you knew that. You said you were keeping tabs on me-“ 

“On whether you were alive or not!” Richie snaps, letting go of him and stepping away. “It’s not like I got a monthly newsletter.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, and then neither of them seems to know what to say next. Eddie wishes he could see Richie’s face better but he’s not much more than a dark shape leaning against the tree. He shivers, feeling the cold much more now he’s out of the circle of Richie’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” Richie finally says, and he sound genuinely regretful. “That must have been hard.”

“Not really,” Eddie says. “What we had wasn’t much more than a business arrangement. Which you’d know if you’d ever bothered to come talk to me. Or send a letter.”

He’s aware that he says this last bit reproachfully. He’s braced for a fight, but Richie just makes a puzzled noise.

“I did send a letter. Fuck, I must have sent thirty,” Richie says. “You never replied.”

“Bullshit,” Eddie says but he feels unsettled. “I wasted years waiting for you in Sweetwater without a word. You never showed up.” 

“I did show up,” Richie growls. “And when I asked where you were, they told me you had a _wife_.”

“When?” Eddie demands. “When was this?”

Richie hesitates. Eddie can’t see his face, but he gets the feeling that the expression on it is flustered.

“I told you I was late,” Richie says defensively.

“How late?” Eddie asks, eyes narrowed. “Because as I recall we agreed to meet in six months’ time. When did you turn up?”

“…Three years after that,” Richie admits after a pause.

“Three _years_?” Eddie echoes in disbelief. “What were you doing for _three years_?”

“I told you in my letters,” Richie says, sounding frustrated.

“I already told you I never got any letters!” Eddie says and then puts a hand to his face, feeling a vein pulsing in his forehead. The post orgasm high has officially worn off. He’s uncomfortably aware of the way his clothes are sticking to him.

“I guess it doesn’t matter what you were doing,” he says, talking more to the ground than Richie. “It’s too late now to regret it I guess.”

Richie shifts and for a moment Eddie thinks he’s going to reach out. But in the end, Richie just looks away and says, “Maybe. Maybe it is.”

* * *

Eddie comes back to the campfire first, Richie following after a respectable period of time. They’ve made sure to clean themselves up a little but it’s clear from the looks they get from the others that they’re fooling no one. Thankfully though, no one says anything and most of the conversation seems to revolve around what the plan is for tomorrow.

Eddie listens closely and tries to avoid making eye contact with Richie across the flames. He mostly succeeds at this.

At one point he catches Beverly giving him a considering sidelong glance.

“What?” he asks bluntly but she just leans over and plucks a leaf from the back of his hair.

“You fall over?” she asks with a hint of a smirk. “There’s a lot of dirt on your back.”

“Yes,” Eddie says primly. “It was dark out there. A lot of roots.”

“Uh huh,” she says but thankfully doesn’t press the point further.

* * *

The next morning Bill is intent on riding into town to go and speak to Georgie. After some debate it’s decided that only one person should go with him to avoid attention. After even more debate, it’s decided that person should be Beverly, for no other reason than that she drew the short straw.

“You should take Annabelle,” Eddie tells her. “She’s fast.”

“What’s wrong with my horse?” Beverly asks.

“Nothing,” Eddie says. “But Annabelle is better.”

He’s telling the truth, but really what Eddie wants is some excuse to be busy. He’d spent most of last night lying awake and thinking too much. The process of saddling Annabelle up and instructing Beverly on how best to ride her will provide a welcome distraction.

Unfortunately, Beverly doesn’t seem to enjoy being explained to all that much.

“I think I can handle it,” she says, cutting Eddie off midway through an in-depth description of Annabelle’s feeding habits. “One horse is pretty much like another.”

“Not this horse,” Eddie says grudgingly, smoothing a hand across Anabelle’s neck.

“Are you ready to go Bev?” Bill asks, trotting up.

“Yes,” Beverly says decisively and mounts up in one graceful motion. Eddie suddenly catches sight of Richie moving towards them across the campsite. The purposeful look in his eye suggests that he’s looking to talk more about what happened last night.

“Hey,” Eddie says, panicking. “Maybe I should come with you.”

“That wasn’t the plan,” Bill says, frowning. “I thought you said it was safer with less people.”

“One more won’t hurt,” Eddie says and then he looks at Beverly. “Let me tag along.”

He must sound a little pleading because she relents.

“Fine,” she says. “Saddle up.”

“That’s okay,” Eddie says, watching Richie get closer. “Annabelle can take two. Let’s not waste time.”

Beverly sighs and holds out a hand. Eddie grasps it gratefully and pulls himself on behind her.

“Thank you,” he tells her, hugely relieved.

She mutters something under her breath that sounds like _coward,_ but then they’re off and moving into a canter. When Eddie looks back, Richie is giving him a sardonic little wave goodbye.

* * *

Out in the open they move quickly, Bill taking the lead. He’s unusually quiet this morning and Eddie wonders if he’s worried about seeing his brother again. That’s alright though, Eddie isn’t in the mood for talking. He’s more anxious about staying on the saddle. For all that it was his idea, it’s a lot scarier riding at a full gallop when he isn’t the one holding the reins.

  
“Am I holding on too tight,” he asks Beverly anxiously. “Tell me if I am.”

“No,” she says. “But listen. Can I give you some advice? About Richie?”

“…Yes?” Eddie says reluctantly. He’s suddenly aware he may have escaped one conversation about his feelings just to trap himself in another.

“Go easy on him okay?” Beverly says with an odd edge to her voice. Eddie wishes he could see her face, but from this angle all he can see is red hair.

“Easy on him?” Eddie repeats, feeling defensive. “Beverly, no offense but you don’t know-“

“I know enough,” she says. “And I know what state he was in when I found him back in Montreal.”

“What state?” Eddie asks suspiciously. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“That’s for Richie to tell you,” Beverly says.

Eddie begins to feel a headache building up behind his eyes. It feels to early in the day for people to start being enigmatic. 

“You can’t just drop hints like that and not tell me,” he complains but before she has time to answer, Bill is holding up his hand to bring them to a halt.

“There,” he says, pointing over the scrublands to a small farmhouse on the outskirts of Derry. “I think that’s the place. Georgie drew me a picture once.”

“You’ve never been there yourself?” Eddie asks and Bill shakes his head regretfully.

“Not since I was a kid,” he says and then looks a little ashamed. “We weren’t in touch for a long time. He was just a baby when I left. This letter was the first thing I’ve heard from him in years.”

“Family is tough,” Eddie says, trying to think of something neutral to say. He’s not sure he would have come all the way back to Derry for a brother he hadn’t seen in fifteen years.

“True,” Bill says gravely. “But it’s important.”

Beverly and Eddie share a sidelong glance.

“Are you gonna see your dad while you’re here?” Eddie asks her in an undertone as they set off.

“No,” she says firmly. “I don’t even know if he’s alive. He can rot in hell as far as I care though. You?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Eddie says shortly. His mother was still alive he was pretty sure, but he felt no need to go and confirm the theory. He had spent enough time trying to cut that umbilical cord to weaken now.

The farmhouse stays quiet as they approach, and no one rushes out to greet them as they come to a halt in the yard outside. It’s a small place but fairly nice, at least for a Derry building. There are flowerboxes at the windows and a small goat bleating behind the white fence.

“Are you sure this is it?” Eddie asks doubtfully when they come to a stop. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

“I’m sure,” Bill says, but he doesn’t sound it.

They dismount and for a moment stand there, looking at the empty windows of the farmhouse. There’s a strange buzzing sound and Eddie sniffs.

“What’s that smell?” he asks Beverly, but she doesn’t answer.

She’s standing very still, looking at the house. When Eddie follows the line of her gaze, he sees it.

The door of the farmhouse is slightly ajar. Not only that but, below the doorknob, there’s a smear of something dark against the cheerful yellow paint.

“Is that…” Eddie hears Bill say but Beverly is silencing him with a finger to her lips.

“Stay here,” she whispers to Bill. “Eddie….”

Eddie nods and pulls out his revolver.

Together, the two of them take up positions on either side of the door. Someone has planted honeysuckle around the edges but even their sweet scent isn’t enough to cover up the smell coming from inside. It’s sharp and metallic and Eddie grits his teeth.

Beverly pushes the door with her foot, and it creaks open easily. This close, it wasn’t hard to tell the distinctive signs of a forced lock.

Beverly meets Eddie’s eyes and he nods, taking a breath.

She goes first, gun cocked and ready and Eddie is close on her heels. He’s not sure what to expect inside but within seconds it becomes clear that the time for shooting has long passed.

“Oh God,” Eddie hers himself say, but it’s distant, as if he’s hearing his own voice down the end of a long tunnel. He brings a hand to his mouth and presses it in tight.

He knows now what the buzzing noise was. It was flies.

“Keep your gun up,” Beverly says. “We need to check the rest of the house.”  
  


They move through the house together but there’s nothing in any of the other rooms. Nothing alive at least.

When they come out, Bill must see something in their faces, because he’s stepping forward with a panicked expression.

“Are they in there?” he asks. “Is G-Georgie-“

Eddie blocks his way when Bill tries to push past him to the door.

“Don’t go in Bill,” Beverly says in a low voice. “Don’t go in.”

“A-are they a-all…” Bill starts but he can’t seem to finish.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie blurts out. “I’m sorry Bill. They’re dead.”

“Listen to me Bill,” Beverly says urgently “This is fresh. They must have known you were coming _. This whole thing was a trap._ ”

“We need to get back,” Eddie says, as the full implications hit him at last. “They knew you weren’t leaving, they wanted you to see this…. They must know where we are.”

Bill looks like a ghost, still staring at the yellow door. It’s hard to tell if he’s taking any of this in, but in the end, he nods and lets them pull him towards the horses.

* * *

He’s in no state to ride a horse, so in the end he sits behind Eddie on Annabelle. His arms around Eddie’s waist are alarmingly slack. Eddie can only pray that Bill keeps it together enough not to hold on, because they can’t stop, not now.

As they near the woods where they left the others, Eddie hears Bill murmuring something, but it’s hard to make out over the wind rushing in his ears.

“What?” Eddie yells back.

“I’ll fuh-fucking k-kill them,” Bill says in a ragged voice in Eddie’s ear. “A-all of them.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say; all he can think of is getting back to the others. Of being on time. When he closes his eyes, he sees Richie waving goodbye.

Even before they reach the treeline, Eddie knows it’s too late. He can see the torn-up foliage where horses have come through and smell the smoke carried on the wind. A moment later they burst through the trees into the clearing; Eddie draws so sharply on the reins that Annabelle rears up in alarm. Bill grabs on so tightly that for a moment, Eddie can’t draw in the breath to call out.

A moment’s glance is enough to confirm that the Bower’s gang have already come and gone.

The campfire has been kicked over and the smoldering ashes are strewn over the wreck of their campsite. There’s no sign of the horses. It looks abandoned, and for a brief moment Eddie has a surge of hope, thinking maybe they had somehow gotten warning; gotten out in time.

Then he sees the body.


	5. Hang 'Em High

It’s just a slumped shape under a willow tree; hidden by the dark shadow of the tree, it could be anyone. Even so, Eddie’s heart jumps in his chest, his mouth catching around the shape of Richie’s name.

Then Bill is pushing past him, calling, “Stan!”

Eddie feels a horrible guilty rush of relief so intense that for a moment all he can do is sway in place. Then the reality kicks in and he rushes to join Bill, who is on his knees on the ground next to Stan.

“He’s a-alive!” Bill says, looking up with wide frightened eyes.

“For now,” Stan says and winces. Eddie suspects it was meant as a joke but looking at the spreading red stain on Stan’s shirt and the deathly pallor to his skin, it’s hard to find it funny. Eddie crouches down and carefully pulls back his jacket to see the worst of the damage.

“This looks bad,” Eddie says softly, touching Stan’s chest. “Really bad.”

“You think?” Stan asks, gritting his teeth. “Here I was thinking it was just a scratch.”

They all look up at the sound of hoofbeats but it’s just Beverly, catching up at last.

“What happened?” she cries out, practically falling out of the saddle and running over.

“They surprised us,” Stan says in a weak raspy voice. “They came from nowhere. Richie and Mike, they-“

He cuts off with a grunt of pain, eyes squeezing tightly closed.

“ _What_ ,” Eddie says and has to stop himself from shaking Stan in his agitation. “What happened to the others?”

“G-give him suh-some space,” Bill says. “Stan d-don’t try to talk if it’s too p-painful.”

“It’s okay,” Stan says weakly. “I need to tell you. Richie and Mike- they took them somewhere. Back to town I think.”

“Why not you?” Beverly asks, stripping off her jacket. She wads it up into a ball and places it on Stan’s stomach where the blood is darkest. “Press down on this Bill. It needs a steady pressure.”

“I moved for my gun,” Stan says. “Guess I wasn’t fast enough. They must have thought they had killed me. Maybe they have.”

He laughs and it’s a horrible raspy thing. His face is draining of colour at an alarming rate and Bill shakes his head.

“N-No,” he says fiercely. “You’re not g-going _anywhere_.”

“He needs a doctor,” Eddie says. “I think I saw the sign for one in the last town we passed before Derry.”

“That’s miles away,” Stan protests with a wince. “You need to go after the others.”

For a moment Eddie is torn. He’s the fastest rider, and right now Stan doesn’t have much time. But the thought of leaving the others, of leaving _Richie_ -

To his immense relief, Bill takes the decision out of his hands.

“I’ll go,” he says tightly. “I made a p-promise to his wife.”

Beverly and Eddie look at each other.

“They can’t be too far gone,” she says. “If we’re fast, we can still catch them before…”

She doesn’t have to finish. Eddie knows the stakes. He nods tightly and stands up, looking down at Stan and Bill.

“Stay alive,” he tells Stan and it comes out as an order.

Stan smiles at him weakly.

“Same to you,” he says.

“Are you two gonna be alright?” Beverly asks and Bill nods.

“D-Don’t worry about us,” he tells them and then something dark passes across his face. “Just…Just make it right. Fuh-for Georgie.”

As he goes to grab Annabelle’s reins, Eddie sees the glimmer of something lying in the ash by the campfire. When he crouches down and brushes away the ash, it’s Richie’s glasses; miraculously unbroken. He looks at them for a long moment and then brushes them off carefully and puts them in his breast pocket for safekeeping.

* * *

It isn’t hard to follow the trail of the riders back in the direction of Derry, the ground is so torn up with hoofprints. From the looks of it, it might have been as many as ten riders, going fast and hard.

But that’s alright; Eddie is faster, and he grits his teeth against the wind and urges Annabelle on. They tear over the grassy scrubland, moving so quickly they could have been flying up the hills that border Derry. The wind is stronger out here in the open and Eddie has a horrible feeling of being exposed.

“Is it really a good idea to rush right into this?” Eddie shouts back over his shoulder. “Isn’t that just what they want?”

Beverly who has flattened herself to Eddie’s back, leans forward.

“I don’t think so,” she yells into his ear. “I think they expected Bill to go charging right into town after seeing what they did at the farmhouse. Wait, hold up, I think I see something-“

They’ve just crested the hill and Derry is spread out before them. From here it looks like a great black spider hunched in the crook of the valley.

At first Eddie thinks Beverly is pointing at the town; but then he sees it.

Far below them, at the edge of road leading into town, is the spreading dark shape of an oak tree. A small group clusters around it; three men on horseback holding rifles. A fourth rider sits awkwardly on the saddle beneath a low branch. Unlike the others, he is hatless, and the sun catches on his dark hair.

Even from this distance, Eddie can see the rope strung about his neck. 

“ _Richie_ ,” he breathes out.

“Jesus,” he hears Beverly say in a horrified whisper. “They’re going to hang him.”

“Get your gun ready,” Eddie snarls and then he’s urging Anabelle down the hill with a flick of the reins.

The ground is falling away beneath them faster than ever before but still it’s not enough. They’re still too far away and, as Eddie watches, one of the men on horseback raises his revolver in the air.

The single shot echoes through the valley, startling up a flock of birds from the tree’s branches.

“No,” Beverly cries out but it’s too late. The horse beneath Richie bolts; the rope pulls taught around his neck.

Eddie stops thinking.

The world narrows down to a fixed point. The ground is a blur beneath his feet.

He feels the cold press of metal against his cheek but doesn’t turn. This is the fastest he’s ever ridden in his life, but it’s still not enough. He can feel the long barrel of the rifle resting on his shoulder.

“Stay still,” Beverly is saying, her voice deadly calm and he holds his breath.

She squeezes the trigger once, twice, three times. Eddie feels each shot reverberate against his shoulder like a blow. The noise is deafeningly loud; there’s a dull ringing in his right ear.

The first shot goes wide but the second and third find their mark. The rope snaps.

After that, time seems to slow for Eddie.

The rifle is going off next to him but somehow everything has become muffled. The men on horseback are wheeling around and raising their guns, faces distorted in surprise. The closest one crumples up, falling from his horse, but Eddie barely registers it. All he can see is Richie, moving weakly on the ground where he fell.

He pulls Annabelle up so sharply that she rears up in alarm, nearly throwing them both to the ground. Beverly curses and grabs onto his back.

“Wait,” she calls out, but Eddie doesn’t listen. He’s already sliding out of the saddle and running over to where Richie is thrashing back and forth. Now that he’s closer Eddie can see that his hands are still tied behind his back. The end of the rope is trailing in the dust but it’s still taut around Richie’s neck.

A bullet whistles past Eddie’s head but he doesn’t look to see who fired it, sinking to his knees in the dirt. He pulls Richie’s head onto his lap and gets his fingers under the rope where it’s cutting into the skin of Richie’s neck.

“Hold on, “Eddie tells him. “Hold on, I’ve got you.”

The moment the noose loosens, Richie draws in a ragged lungful of air and starts coughing.

“You idiot,” Eddie tells him, hands shaking in Richie’s hair. “You bastard.”

“What did I do now?” Richie asks in a hoarse whisper and Eddie can’t even bring himself to say _, you almost died, that’s what you did_ , and so instead he just leans down and kisses him.

He’s dimly aware that Beverly is still shooting, he can hear her cursing and the sound of the gun going off, but for a moment the only thing in the world is Richie’s mouth against his.

It only lasts for a fraction of a second but when he pulls away, Richie is gasping for breath.

“Fuck, sorry, sorry,” Eddie says. “Are you alright?”

“Eddie?” Richie asks, squinting up at him. “Please tell me that’s you.”

“Oh right,” Eddie says again. “Your glasses.”

He takes them out and perches them on Richie’s nose.

“These are so dirty, what did you do to- “Richie starts to complain and then suddenly his eyes widen. “Eddie, behind you!”

Eddie spins and sees a gang member drenched in blood staggering towards them with a grimace on his face. Eddie brings up his revolver, but he already knows he’s too slow and, throwing out an arm to cover Richie, he braces himself for the gunshot.

It rings out a second later and Eddie winces, but to his surprise the pain never comes.

When he cracks one eye open, Beverly is standing over the man’s body, the rifle smoking in her hand.

Eddie lets out a rush of air.

“Is that all of them?” he asks her, looking around.

“Yes,” Beverly says dryly. “No thanks to either of you.”

“Excuse me,” Richie croaks. “I was a little busy being strung up.”

“Oh, I know what you were busy doing,” Beverly says, arching her eyebrow.

Eddie flushes but, try as he might, he can’t bring himself to regret the kiss. His pulse is still racing, though that might have been more from the few minutes where he had been sure Richie was dead.

“Don’t be jealous,” Richie rasps out. “Can someone please untie me?”

“How’s your neck?” Eddie asks him when Richie is free and rubbing at his wrists. “Does your larynx feel crushed?”

“I don’t know,” Richie says, gingerly moving his jaw. “What does that feel like?”

Eddie touches his fingers to Richie’s neck. There’s a red, rough line where the rope has subbed away the skin, but aside from that, nothing seems to badly damaged. Which is to say, when Eddie presses down, he can’t feel any jagged bits of spine.

“How’s that feel?” he asks softly. When he looks up, Richie is looking at him with a strange sort of expression. Eddie is suddenly aware of how close they are.

“Good,” Richie says and his pulse leaps under Eddie’s fingertips. “I mean not broken. I think.”

Beverly clears her throat tactfully and Eddie quickly drops his hand from Richie’s neck.

“If you can move,” Beverly says. “We need to get to Mike.”

Richie nods, his face darkening.

“They said something about taking him to the sheriff’s office,” he says. “To Bower’s.”

“Why just him,” Eddie asks, helping Richie to his fight. “Why not you?”

“He must know that Mike was the one to kill his old man,” Beverly says, eyes narrowed.

Richie nods grimly. “I think Henry’s got something special planned for him. We need to get going.”

“ _We_ do,” Eddie says. “Not you.”

“Are you crazy?” Richie asks. “You two aren’t going in there without me. Besides I think one of them took my hat.”

“A minute ago, you were swinging from a rope!” Eddie snaps. “You shouldn’t even be _talking_.”

Beverly, who had been reloading her gun, snaps it shut with a click.

“Look,” she says. “We don’t have time for this. If Richie can ride a horse and hold a gun, then he’s coming with us.”

* * *

In the end though, they leave the horses behind and go in on foot. It’s not far to the main street and it doesn’t take long after that before they begin to hear noises; shouting mostly but also the clink of glasses, the sound of an out of tune piano.

“Sounds like a party,” Richie says as they crouch in the shadow of an alley. “Not very nice of them not to invite us.”

“It’s coming from the saloon,” Beverly says, poking her head out to watch the street. “Looks like a lot of them in there. Judging from the noise, there could be twenty men in there.”

“Twenty of them and three of us,” Richie says mournfully. “I’m not sure I like those odds. Where’s Bill anyway?”

“Taking Stanley to a doctor,” Beverly says without looking away from the saloon.

“Stan’s alive?” Richie says, so loudly that Eddie has to reach out and slap a hand over his mouth.

“Shh,” he says in a whisper. “You want to get us all killed?”

“Sorry,” Richie says, muffled through Eddie’s fingers. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“He better be,” Beverly says darkly. “Look, we need a plan.”  
  


“You go ahead and find Mike,” Eddie says, thinking fast. “Me and Richie can handle the saloon.”

“Are you sure?” Richie asks dubiously. “You want to go up against all those men by ourselves?”

“Scared?” Eddie asks, raising his eyebrow.

“I’m not worried for myself,” Richie says. “Unless maybe you’ve spent the last fifteen years improving your aim.”

“What are you saying?” Eddie asks, eyes narrowing. “You think I can’t shoot?”

“Okay, great so we’re agreed,” Beverly says impatiently. “Let’s go.”

She doesn’t waste any time in stealing down the alleyway; so quickly that in less than a moment she’s out sight. Part of Eddie suspects that she suggested this plan just to get away from the bickering.

“So how do you want to do this?” Eddie says. “We could sneak in around back or try and start a fire or something…You still have your matchbox, right?”

“That seems like a lot of work,” Richie says, screwing up his face. “I say we just go in the front door.”

Eddie laughs and then he realizes Richie is being serious.

“What-“ he sputters. “Are you insane? Did the lack of oxygen give you brain damage?”

“Trust me,” Richie says and then he puts his hand on Eddie’s, warm and firm. “You can do that, right?”

Eddie looks at him for a moment and then he groans.

“Goddamnit,” he says. “If we die, I’m going to be really pissed off with you.”

“I’ll take that risk,” Richie says and then he smiles.

Eddie finds he’s smiling back, despite everything. After a moment he looks away, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat. For a moment it had felt just like old times.

They step out into dust of the street. Ahead of them is the darkened doorway to the saloon. In the glaring white light of the street, the shadows look thick; impenetrable.

“Ready?” Richie asks, and Eddie nods, taking a breath.

Still, for a moment, Eddie doesn’t move. He knows there’s a good chance that neither of them will come out of this alive. Maybe that’s a good trade, to give Beverly the time she needs to help Mike, but even so, just for a moment he wants to stay like this, side by side in the sunlight.

“You know,” Eddie says gruffly. “I’m glad you aren’t dead.”

He’s talking mostly to the ground in front of him. For some reason it feels like it would be too painful to meet Richie’s eyes right now.

“Coming from you that’s practically a love confession,” Richie says lightly.

Eddie finally looks over at him. He doesn’t say anything, but he knows he doesn’t have to; the truth must be written all over his face.

“Oh,” Richie says, blinking. “ _Oh_.”

“Shall we?” Eddie asks.

For a moment Richie looks like he’s searching for something to say, but then he just nods.

* * *

Inside is chaos.

There must be about twenty men in the saloon, all in various stages of drunkenness and a wave of noise hits them the moment they enter. Two men playing poker seem to be having a drunken argument; other are calling loudly for the bartender. An out of tune piano is being played with equal parts enthusiasm and lack of skill. There’s a general air of celebration and for a moment no one seems to even notice that they’ve walked in.

That is, at least, until Richie fires his revolver in the air.

In the small saloon, the sound cuts through the air so loudly that even Eddie startles. The music cuts off abruptly and in the fresh silence, Eddie hears a bottle smash to the ground.

“Excuse me,” Richie says cheerfully. “Could I have a moment of your time?”

There’s a shocked silence and then a single outlaw staggers to his feet.

“You-“ he says hoarsely. “You’re meant to be dead.”

“Oh am I?” Richie says, surprised and then he looks down as if checking to see if that was true. “Guess it didn’t stick.”

The outlaw moves for his gun, but Eddie is quicker; he lets off a warning shot at the man’s feet and the outlaw staggers back, his hands in the air.

“I suggest you all stay very still,” Eddie says and then glances over at Richie. He still has no idea what the plan is here.

“I wanted to let you all know,” Richie says. “That things are about to get very messy around here. We have a lot of friends waiting to make your acquaintance, but I asked them to let me talk to you first. You see, I wanted to give you all a chance to put down your weapons.”

Eddie tries to look like he knew this all along. Richie looks remarkably cool, considering he’s standing in front of a group of murderers but then again, he always did like an audience.

“Why would we do that?” another man asks in a slow drawl.

“Because when my friends come in,” Richie says with a faint smile, “they’re gunning down any man with a weapon in his hand. And my friends don’t miss.”

Eddie knows he should be listening closely, but his attention has been caught by the bartender, who maybe out of shock, still hasn’t stopped cleaning glasses. As Eddie watches, he spits onto a filthy rag and smears it around the glass edge.

“How do we know you aren’t bluffing?” a man asks in a shaky voice.

“Eddie?” Richie asks without taking his eyes off the crowd. “Am I bluffing?”

Eddie tears his gaze away from the bartender.

“You aren’t bluffing,” he says. “Any of you people remember what happened the last time the Denbrough gang was in town?”

A few of the older outlaws look a little pale.

“I’ll give you to a count of five,” Richie says. “Five……Four.”

There’s a clunk of something falling to the floor, closely followed by another.

“Kick ‘em over,” Eddie says, “Nice and slow.”

“Three,” Richie says slowly, and a few guns come skittering over the floor to rest at Eddie’s feet.

“Two-“Richie starts to say but at that moment, a man half hidden in the shadows in the back of the room, reaches for his gun.

Eddie sees it and shouts out a warning, but the man is a fast draw. The shot rings out, skimming an inch to the left of Richie’s head to bury itself in the wood of the door behind him.

All hell breaks loose.

Richie takes out two men before Eddie is dragging him down behind an upturned table; around them the room is breaking out in a chaos of bullets and shouting.

“When you suggested going in here, I _thought_ you had a plan,” Eddie yells out and ducks his head, hearing a bullet whistle past his ear.

“This is the plan,” Richie says, wincing as a stray bullet hits the floor beside him, giving off a small puff of sawdust. “What, you don’t like it?”

“It’s terrible,” Eddie snarls, and then he crows in delight when his next shot sends an outlaw crumpling to the ground. “Ha! Who’s a bad shot now?”

The men who had given up their guns are mostly cowering, though a few of them have snuck out the back. Eddie counts six outlaws left. Three of them behind the bar, two behind the upturned poker table. A third is taking pot shots from behind the piano.

“I’ll take left if you take right,” Eddie calls out but when he looks over Richie isn’t even firing his gun; he’s looking at Eddie with a strange expression on his face, like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“What is it?” Eddie asks, panicking. “Are you hit?”

“No,” Richie says, “I just. I just wanted you know. That I…That I feel the same way.”

“What?” Eddie asks, totally lost. A bullet flies over his head and he yelps, twisting round to return fire. The man by the piano goes down hard and doesn’t get back up.

“I mean I...” Richie says, as if he’s struggling to get it out. “I feel the same way about you. I mean. That I always did.”

“Could we maybe postpone this conversation?” Eddie says, having to yell over the gunfire. “To a time when we aren’t getting shot at?”

“Okay then,” Richie says and then he grins in a way that’s almost feral. “Let’s finish this then.”

“On three?” Eddie asks.

“Why wait?” Richie says and in unison they rise from behind the table, guns outstretched.

* * *

When the dust settles and the gunshots have stopped ringing in Eddie’s ears, he walks over to check behind the bar.

“That’s all of them,” he calls back over his shoulder and holds out his hand to help up the bartender, who is crouched, dazed and still clutching the glass he was polishing.

“Thank you,” the bartender says, but when he’s on his feet, Eddie doesn’t let go of his hand.

“Listen, to me,” he says, low and dangerous, pulling the man close. “Because I’m only going to say this once. If you’re going to be serving people drinks, then you need to at least _try_ and be hygienic. That rag? Is disgusting.”

“I found my hat!” Richie calls out happily, but Eddie doesn’t break eye contact with the bartender, who has begun to sweat.

“Well?” Eddie asks. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” the bartender says quickly. “Perfectly.”

“Okay then,” Eddie says, letting him go. “Well. Sorry about the mess.”

  
When he turns back, Richie is looking at him in that odd exposed way again.

“What?” Eddie asks, bristling.

“Nothing,” Richie says and then smiles. This smile is softer, almost dopey and very out of place in amongst all the broken furniture and bodies lying around them. “Just glad you’re not dead.”

* * *

Outside in the street, they barely have time to blink the sunlight out of their eyes before they hear the faint pop of gunshots echoing down the street. They exchange a look and then they’re off and running in the direction of the sheriff’s office.

Up closer Eddie can see that the office door is hanging off its hinges. From the darkness of the doorway, something is emerging.

For a heart-stopping moment Eddie thinks it’s Bowers, or worse, the sheriff. From the way Richie stops in his tracks and brings up his gun, he must suspect the same thing.

Then the shadows resolve themselves into two shapes and Eddie lets out a sigh of relief. It’s Beverly, supporting Mike on her shoulder. He’s slumped and there’s a fresh bruise over one eye, but even though he’s leaning heavily on Beverly, there’s a look of grim determination on his face.

“Mike!” Richie says, hurrying forward to take his other side. “You’re alive!”

“Am I?” Mike asks in a raspy voice. “I sure don’t feel like it.”

“What happened?” Eddie asks.

“Turns out Bowers wasn’t so forgiving as he seemed,” Mike says. “He was the one to bring us back. He told me about what he did to Bill’s family. He had a lot of plans for us. Me especially.”

He shudders and Eddie feels a flush of rage.

“Chatty guy,” Richie mutters, scowling at the sheriff’s office. “What happened to him?”

“Dead,” Mike says shortly. “I hit him over the head with a teakettle while he was monologuing.”

“It was all over by the time I got there,” Beverly says. “How did it go for you two?”

Eddie and Richie share a loaded look.

“Fine,” Eddie says blandly while Richie mutters, “We worked a lot out.”

Beverly gives them a weird look. “So, the Bowers Gang?”

“Dead,” Richie says quickly. “Or run off.”

“So what now?” Eddie asks, looking around at the empty street. “Is it…is it over?”

“No,” Beverly says in a low voice. “It’s not. Not while he's still out there.”

None of them have to ask who she’s talking about.

“Bowers said the sheriff is up in the hills just east of here,” Mike says, sounding shaken. “Hiding out in the caves.”

They’re all silent for a moment, thinking it through.

“He’s just one man,” Eddie says at last. “Bowers is dead. Isn’t that enough?”

Beverly shakes her head. “It’ll never be enough. You saw what happened to Georgie and his family. You think Bowers thought of that? He doesn’t have the imagination for that kind of cruelty.”

“Well,” Richie says looking between them. “I guess we better saddle up then.”


	6. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The hills to the east of Derry are rocky and exposed and the single narrow path that runs up alongside the stream is treacherous. As a result, they have to ride slowly but it still feels good to be on horseback again. Eddie was relieved to find Annabelle where he had tethered her; the others have ‘borrowed’ their mounts from outside the freshly abandoned saloon. 

It’s a difficult journey, especially with the sun beginning to hang low in the sky. Eddie is already worried about being able to make their way back down the narrow path in the dark.

It would help if they knew what they were looking for; any number of small caves could be hiding in the rocky outcrops around them. The best they could do was follow the small trickle of the stream up and up, until finally when Eddie looked back, Derry resembled nothing more than a child’s collection of toy houses beneath them.

Finally, the stream led into the mouth of a wide cave, a gaping mouth in the side of the rock. They came to a halt outside. Even without looking at the other’s, Eddie knew that they were all thinking the same thing, staring into the darkness. Somewhere in there he was waiting for them.

“So, should we draw straws or….” Richie starts but then he holds up his hands when Eddie glares at him. “Just kidding!”

They only have the one lantern, fished out of Annabelle’s saddlebags. Eddie is the one to take it on the basis that out of all of them, he’s the worst with a gun. For once, Eddie doesn’t feel the need to defend himself; not if it means he gets to stay close to the light. The only downside is that this means he has to lead the way.

As they step inside the cavern, the shadows flare up and he’s suddenly very grateful to feel Richie close at his side. Mike and Beverly follow close behind, guns drawn and scanning the darkened corners for any sign of movement. 

Inside, the cave is a lot larger than Eddie first thought and the lantern light doesn’t penetrate the black tunnel ahead. The floor is dry, hard dirt beneath his feet and there’s an eerie silence, punctuated only by the trickle of the stream.

“Isn’t this nice?” Richie mutters next to him. “Homey.”

There’s a strange smell coming from the tunnel ahead. It’s partly the normal dampness you would expect from a cave but there’s something underneath the mustiness. Something sickly sweet and rotting. The deeper they get, the stronger it becomes, until finally Eddie has to use his spare hand to pull his scarf up over his nose.

“Jesus,” he hears Beverly mutter behind him. “What _is_ that?”

“Try not to touch anything,” Eddie says, his voice echoing strangely off the cave walls. He can’t shake the feeling that somehow this whole place is infectious; contaminated.

“Are we sure about this?” Beverly asks doubtfully as they go further in. “This place doesn’t look lived in.”

Before any of them have time to answer, the light finally falls on the end of the tunnel. It’s a bleak, rocky place, completely bare. Eddie had half been expecting a rocking chair, but this place seems long abandoned.

“Dead end,” Richie says.

“Look,” Mike says softly. “The stream.”

There’s a small pool where it bubbles out of the rocks, overhung by stalactites. The surface reflects the lamplight like an unbroken black mirror. Well…. almost unbroken.

Lying half in the water, face down, is a body. From the state of it, it looks like it’s been here a long time. Eddie thinks for a moment he’s going to be sick and he has to swallow hard to supress the feeling.

“I guess that explains the smell,” Richie says. “Should we fish him out?”

“You want to touch it?” Eddie ask incredulously. “Is that safe?”

“Death isn’t contagious as far as I know,” Richie says, sloshing forward into the pool. “Anyway, this stream feeds into the Derry canal. If we don’t move it-“

Suddenly he lets out a yell and staggers back, half falling into the water.

“Richie!” Eddie says and nearly drops the lantern in his rush to get over to him. When he crouches down next to him in the water and puts a hand on his shoulder, Richie is shaking. Even through his glasses, Eddie can see his eyes are wide and horrified.

“What is it?” he asks but Richie just points a wavering finger at the body.

“Oh my god,” Beverly says, stepping forward with a splash into the pool. “Eddie the light.”

Reluctantly Eddie lifts the lantern and that’s when he sees it, catching in the light. A metal star pinned on the tattered clothes of the corpse.

“It’s him,” Beverly says, her hand pressed against her mouth. “The sheriff.”

“Are we sure?” Eddie asks, feeling sick. “It’s all…bloated.”

“It’s him,” Mike says. “Look at the face.”

Eddie doesn’t want to, but he forces himself. It’s pale and wrinkled but the smile is still there, stretching from ear to ear.

“Jesus,” he hears Richie mutter beside him. “When do you think he died? You think Bowers did this?”

“No,” Beverly says and then she’s stepping closer to the body and leaning in to look. “I did it. I can still see the bullet holes. Look.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Eddie mutters. He doesn’t want to get any closer than he has to; he’s not even happy about being in the same water.

He gets to his feet, pulling Richie up with him. Even when they’re standing, he doesn’t let go of Richie’s arm, pressing in close to his side. Richie doesn’t pull away.

“That’s not possible,” Mike is saying. “That was fifteen years ago.”

“And he’s still…juicy,” Richie observes. Eddie gags a little.

“Bowers must have put him here,” Beverly says. “Or he was still alive enough to crawl up here and die.”

  
“Well…. I guess that makes our job done,” Eddie ventures at last. “So, we can go?”

“No,” Mike says firmly. “Richie was right. We can’t leave the body here in the water.”

Eddie shudders, thinking of the rotting corpse sitting up here all this time, the stream running down the hills into Derry, poisoning the land. Could it be that all the sickness in the town, the _evil_ , stemmed from this dark, cold and dripping place? In any other town, he wouldn’t have thought it possible. But this was Derry.

“We need to take it outside,” Beverly says. “And burn it.”

No one argued but no one moved forward to touch the corpse.

Finally, Richie sighs and steps forward.

“Alright fine,” he says wearily. “Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

In the end it takes both Mike and Richie working together to lift the sodden waterlogged body out of the water and up the mouth of the cave. Eddie hovers nearby with the lantern, feeling skittish. He can’t shake the feeling that, at any moment, the body will sit up and start struggling.

“You know,” Richie says with a grunt as they manoeuvre it through the tunnel. “If you had asked me this morning how this day would go…”

“Watch out,” Mike warns. “He’s slipping.”

“I got it,” Richie says and then there’s a sickening crack as the head lolls into a new position.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Eddie mutters and Richie snorts.

“You aren’t even carrying it!” he says and then Beverly shushes them.

“Wait,” she whispers. “There’s something wrong.”  
  


They all freeze in place. They’re nearly out of the cave now; up ahead the sky has darkened to a deep purple.

“What-, “Eddie starts and then he hears it; the thin nervous braying cutting through the silence.

“The horses,” Mike says and swears.

“Eddie _wait_ -” Richie calls out urgently, but Eddie is already pushing the lantern into Beverly’s hands and running for the mouth of the cave.

He’s acting mostly on reflex; up here among the dark rocks, one wrong step could mean disaster if they break a leg. He’s not too worried about what spooked them; horses scare easy and even in a worst-case scenario Eddie isn’t expecting anything worse than a bobcat or coyote.

When he steps outside and finds them gone altogether at first he just curses, thinking that somehow they’ve somehow broken free from their tethers.

It’s not until he steps closer that he sees the reins are still dangling from the tree. The ends are ragged, as if they’ve been cut. Eddie steps closer, frowning.

He makes it two steps before he feels the cold steel pressing into his cheek.

“I suggest you stay still now,” a ragged wheedling voice says and Eddie freezes in place.

He can just see the blurred shine of the knife just below his right eye. Someone steps in close behind him and circles an arm around his neck, pulling him in close.

“Now what did you find in that cave?” Henry Bowers asks, his warm breath stinking of rotten fruit and old blood. “I hope you didn’t disturb him. He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

Eddie opens his mouth to yell and stops when the knifepoint digs into his cheek.

“Uh uh,” Bowers says quickly. “You stay quiet now. Or my hand might just slip, understand? Nod if you do.”

Eddie nods and Bowers turns them both in a sharp movement so they’re facing the mouth of the cave. Eddie stumbles and feels the knife bite into the side of his cheek, a thin searing line of pain.

“Tell them to come out,” Bowers whispers into his ear, his breath horribly warm on Eddie’s ear. “Tell them it’s safe.”

With the hand that isn’t holding the knife to Eddie’s throat, Bowers draws up a revolver, aiming it squarely at the mouth of the cave.

“Eddie?” someone calls out, the sound of it echoing strangely from inside the cave.

“Go on now,” Bowers urges. There’s a click as he pulls back the hammer of his gun.

Eddie takes a deep breath and then he’s yelling, “ _Don’t come out, he’s got a-“_

That’s as far as he gets before Bowers hits him square in the forehead with the butt of the gun. Eddie reels and for a moment he can’t see, lights exploding in his vision. The pain hits a moment after, so sharp it brings tears the edges of his eyes.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” Bowers is snarling, shaking him like a ragdoll and for a moment it’s all Eddie can do not to fall over.

“Fuck you,” he manages to gasp out and then the knife is back against his cheek.

“Stay still, I said,” Bowers snaps and then he’s calling out in the direction of the cave. “Come out slowly! Hands above your head Or I swear to God, I’ll cut the tongue right out of his mouth.”

As his vison clears, Eddie sees them emerge one by one. Beverly looks livid and Mike wary, his eyes flicking between Eddie and the dark trees. Richie comes last and his face is sheet white, his eyes finding Eddie’s almost immediately.

“You alright?” Richie calls out. His tone could almost be mistaken for casual, but Eddie knows Richie better than that, can hear the anger overlaid by tight control.

“I’ve been better,” Eddie says and then stiffens when the knife presses closer.

“Shut up,” Bowers says flatly. “I don’t want to hear no more talking. You meet the sheriff?”

“We did,” Mike says slowly. “Listen, we can all talk about this. Just calm down alright?”

“Calm down?” Bowers says and laughs so loudly that Eddie flinches, shutting his eyes. “You killed my father! You just tried to kill me! You call me a murderer… _hah_! You wiped out my whole family! You know, he said you would be like this, he told me…”

“Who did, Henry?” Beverly says in a gentle tone. “Who told you?”

“The sheriff did!” Henry says and spits off to the side. “He told me you’d be back too...But I know better now, I’m prepared for it….”

He’s rambling now and when his hand slips a little Eddie feels the warm trickle of blood running down his chin. If they wanted to take out Bowers, now was their moment. Richie could do it, he was always the fastest shot, but Eddie knows he won’t, not while Eddie’s life hangs on a literal knife edge.

Eddie knows what he has to do. If he reaches up, grabs the gun out of Bower’s hands…. well he might not escape the knife but if he’s quick-

He opens his mouth and sets his jaw, heart thumping in his chest. Bowers is still rambling, his voice getting wilder with every word. Eddie tenses, waiting for the opening. Richie must see it in his face because he’s shaking his head, mouth forming around the word no, but Eddie just takes a breath and-

The sound of a single gunshot cuts through the night.

For a heart-splitting moment, Eddie thinks that the sound comes from Bowers gun and all he can do is stare helpless at the others, wondering which one of them will fall. But then he hears a low gurgle and a laugh, and then the knife is slipping harmlessly away from his face. When he turns, Bowers is falling to the ground in a heap, eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky.

Behind him is a tall man with a square jaw, holding a smoking gun.

“What the fuck?” Eddie asks weakly.

“Eddie is that you?” the man asks uncertainly. “I hope you don’t mind that I shot him. I don’t really understand what’s happening here.”

Eddie blinks at him in confusion, and suddenly there’s a shout of pure joy behind him.

“Ben!” Beverly calls out happily. “You came!”

“Hi Beverly,” Ben says and pushes up his hat sheepishly with the barrel of his gun. Eddie barely has time to get out of the way before Beverly is barrelling past him to throw her arms around Ben, who looks surprised but definitely not unhappy.

Eddie doesn’t see much after that though because then his name is being called and Richie is grabbing a hold of his arms and peering into his face.

“Are you alright?” he’s saying. “God, your face… I could kill him.”

“Too late for that,” Eddie says, smiling weakly, but Richie doesn’t laugh. He’s using his sleeve to clean the blood off Eddie’s face, looking so upset that Eddie can’t keep himself from reaching up and pulling him down close. 

Their faces are just inches away when something occurs to Eddie and he pulls back, frowning.

“Do you think the horses are okay?” he asks. “I think he let them loose.”

Richie makes a frustrated noise if anything the expression on his face is fiercely fond.

“Eddie…I thought you were going to die. I really could not give a fuck about the horses.”

Eddie thinks about arguing but instead he just pulls Richie down and kisses him. Richie leans into it, lips so warm and soft that for a minute Eddie forgets the cold cave and the smell of blood.

When they pull apart, he sees Richie has taken off his hat and is holding up to shield them from the others. It’s just a small thing but for some reason it effects Eddie more than the kiss itself. It feels like being protected.

Richie needn’t have worried though; the others aren’t even looking in their direction. They’re huddled around each other and talking loudly. Or at least, Beverly and Mike are talking, directing quick fire questions at Ben, who looks like he’s struggling just to keep up.

“But how did you find us,” Mike is asking while at the same time Beverly is saying, “Where have you _been_ Ben? I was so worried about you.”

She’s still hanging onto Ben’s arm and doesn’t look as though she has the intention of letting go anytime soon.

Ben smiles down at her with that same old shyness.

“I got your telegram too late,” he says. “By the time I got down here, you were already gone. I’ve been following you for days now. I would have been here sooner if I hadn’t gotten lost.”

“How many times did you get lost?” Richie asks and Ben blushes.

“Once or twice,” he admits.

Eddie isn’t surprised that at first, he hadn’t recognised who it was. Ben seems to have spent the fifteen years in the city constructing buildings with his own hands judging by all the muscles he seems to have accumulated. He seems the same underneath it all though; still just as sweet-natured as ever. He seems devastated to have come so late and keeps interrupting himself to apologise.

“Don’t be sorry,” Richie tells him. “As far as I’m concerned your timing was perfect.”

Eddie can only nod in agreement.

"I thought you said he was dead anyway," Richie says, poking at Bowers with his foot. 

"I guess I just stunned him," Mike says doubtfully. "I should have double checked."

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Eddie says and casts a dark look in the direction of the cave. "Seems like people have a hard timing staying dead in this town."

* * *

By the time they’ve gathered together enough wood to make a rudimentary funeral pyre, the stars have come out above them and Eddie is exhausted. He and Mike have managed to track down all but one of the horses; to Eddie’s immense relief one of them was Annabelle, who they had found grazing quietly just a few yards away. He had spent a long time cooing at her and checking her over for injuries, but she seemed completely unperturbed by the whole experience.

At last when everything is ready, Richie and Ben haul the sheriff’s body out of the cave where they had left it and place it down next to Henry Bowers on the kindling.

“Anybody want to say a few words?” Ben asks with an endearing sincerity.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Rot in hell.”

“And stay there,” Beverly says quietly. “Who has a match?”

“I do,” Richie says, and plucks the matchbook from his pocket. He takes the cigarette case with it but hesitates before opening it, giving Eddie a sidelong glance.

“Don’t even think about it,” Eddie warns him. “Your throat is still bruised.”

Richie looks nonplussed for a moment, then he laughs. “You know, I almost forgot that happened. This has been a long goddamn day.”

“The longest,” Mike agrees softly. “Let’s finish it.”

Richie lights the match and tosses it onto the dry branches.

Eddie is braced to wait a long time for it to burn but for some reason the fire flares as if Richie had poured alcohol over the flames. It erupts in a burst of flame so hot and bright that Eddie has to shield his eyes; for a brief moment, the body of the sheriff seems to twist and contort in the heart of the fire. There’s a horrible screech, like an animal in pain and the shadow writhes.

Then all at once the flames die down and there’s just the normal crackle of wood and a smell that reminds Eddie unpleasantly of bacon frying in the pan. For a moment, the body of the sheriff holds its shape: a cracked and twisted thing. Then between one moment and the next it crumbles to nothing.

“You want to stay?” he hears Ben ask Beverly in a low voice. “Check it’s dead this time?”

She shudders lightly and shakes her head. “No. No I think that’s enough. I can feel it, can’t you?”

They stand there and watch the fire a little longer just to be sure. In the dark the sparks swirl up like fireflies.

* * *

They should really stay and set up camp, ride out the next morning, but despite their shared exhaustion, no one seems to want to stay another night anywhere near Derry.

Climbing back into the saddle is nearly impossible though and Eddie feels himself swaying in place when he’s finally seated. The cut on his cheek is burning and he can feel his forehead throbbing where Bowers had hit him with the gun. Almost worse though is the aching in his muscles. His body is feeling every moment of the gun fight in the saloon, not to mention the endless fucking _riding_. Annabelle must be as tired as he is, Eddie thinks with a tinge of guilt, and he leans forward to stroke his hand across the smooth plane of her neck.

When he looks up, Richie is watching him from where he’s seated on his own horse.

“Ready to go?” Mike asks.

“Lead the way,” Beverly calls from where she’s seated behind Ben. Her arms are wrapped tightly around his waist and even though she’s not exactly smiling, Eddie can tell that this is the happiest she’s been for a long time. Maybe happy isn’t the right word, he thinks. Free maybe.

For his part Ben looks just as pleased with the riding arrangement and for a moment Eddie feels a pang of something like jealousy.

Eddie can’t help but think how nice it would be to be riding behind Richie, like in the old days. When he could wrap his arms tight around Richie’s waist, lean into his back and could pretend he was closing his eyes against the wind. Let someone else be in charge for a while.

They set out into the night. It takes them a long time to make it down the hill but as soon as they’re on flatter ground, they can follow the road and go as fast as they like. It isn’t long before Eddie loses sense of time and then the world itself seems to narrow down to the sound of hooves moving over dirt and the moonlit road ahead of them.

Eddie is so tired, and it’s not just in his body. He’s tired of the weight of it all, the weight of the past and the choices he’s made. Of all the things he’s seen and done and all the stupid petty little mistakes he’s made along the way.

He’s tired of carrying it all but most of all, he’s tired of carrying it alone.

When they finally see the faint lights of the nearest town glowing up ahead in the distance, Eddie almost wants to call out to the others to slow down. He doesn’t know what will happen after this is all over; all he knows is that he’s not ready yet. He’s not ready for it to end.

* * *

None of them have any sense of how long it takes them to reach the nearest town but when they finally find the doctor’s house and start knocking on the door, he seems happy enough to inform them of the time.

“It’s nearly four in the morning,” he tells them flatly, a big man who looks imposing even in a nightshirt. “Come back tomorrow. Or not at all.”

He seems a little happier when they mention Stanley’s name.

“Oh, yes,” he says, stroking his beard. “The polite man with all the bullet holes. Well, you’ll be happy to hear, he’s already out of the woods. He’s resting up in the local boarding house. But between you and me the landlady won’t be too happy if you show up at this time of night.”

It turns out this prediction is correct.

Ben and Mike have to spend about ten minutes talking her down from escorting them off her property with a shotgun. In the end, only when Bill is woken up by the shouting and comes down to reason with her, does she let them in and grudgingly allow them to rent rooms for the night.

Lucky for them, she tells them, it’s the quiet season. Even so, they have to pay extra for the inconvenience.

They talk for a while in the parlour, mostly about Stanley and how he’s doing but it’s not long before they’re all eager for bed. Beverly has a room to herself, on the landlady’s insistence and after that there’s only two rooms left. Ben and Richie take one and Eddie and Mike the other.

Or at least, that’s the plan. What actually happens is that Mike ends up slinking off to Bill’s room almost immediately, apparently to ‘check in’. Eddie is too tired to be insulted by this blatant attempt at a lie and so he just lets him go with a wave.

When he’s alone in the small pokey room, which looks more like an attic than anything else, he sits back on the bed and sits for a long time staring into space. After a while he tries to take his boots off. His fingers are so numb that it takes him nearly five attempts. He doesn’t bother undressing beyond taking off his belt and jacket.

When expects to go to sleep immediately but instead he lies there for a long time, staring up at the rafters. Everything that’s happened over the past few days is circling through his head. He keeps seeing flashes when he closes his eyes; the sheriff, the saloon, Richie’s feet kicking at the air. After a while he hears the dawn chorus outside and it’s so frustrating, he almost wants to cry.

_Sleep_ , he commands himself. _Go to sleep now._

Finally, when the dawn is tinging the room with a grey light, there’s a knock at the door.

Eddie doesn’t bother asking who it is. When he opens the door, Richie is standing on the other side, slumped against the frame. He looks as wrecked as Eddie feels; worse even, with his hair a bird’s nest and big purple shadows under his eyes.

For a moment Eddie just looks at him and then he moves aside so Richie can come in.

Richie takes three steps and then sprawls out on the bed. Eddie makes sure the door is locked and then goes to lie down next to him.

“If you want to fuck…” Richie says blearily without opening his eyes. “Then we can if you like.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Eddie tells him. “Move over.”

He rolls closer, so his back is pressed against Richie’s front and Richie makes a muzzy noise and throws an arm over Eddie’s waist, pulling him in close. _We still fit together,_ Eddie thinks with mild surprise.

That’s the last conscious thought he manages before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.

* * *

When he wakes up the next morning it’s in slow, painful inches. It takes a while to remember where he is; what he’s doing in this strange bed. He’s aware of the pain in his cheek, the aching of his joints, the sound of someone breathing close by, but it takes a while to stitch those fragments together into a pattern.

When he opens his eyes, Richie’s head is on the pillow next to him. His eyes are shut but Eddie knows from his breathing that he’s not sleeping.

“What time is it?” Eddie asks in a whisper. He can see bright sunlight on the white sheets, but he doesn’t want to look up and out the window; not yet. If he could, he would lie here forever.

“I don’t know,” Richie says, without opening his eyes. “Late. Maybe lunchtime.”

“You sound awful,” Eddie tells him. He’s not exaggerating; Richie’s voice is so cracked and rough it’s almost painful to listen to him.

“Thanks,” Richie says. “I feel it.”

Because Richie’s eyes are closed, Eddie lets himself look properly, for the first time. Richie’s hair is very dark on the pillow; he looks dirty and unshaved and very vulnerable without his glasses. Eddie feels for a moment fiercely protective. Eddie feels that he might kill anyone he tried to walk in the door right now.

“Richie,” he asks finally. “What were you doing for those three years?”

“You sure you want to know?” Richie asks, cracking open one eye. “I thought you said it didn’t matter. That it was too late.”

“Maybe,” Eddie starts and then he finds his mouth is dry, so he licks his lips and tries again. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Richie looks at him with one bright eye for a moment and then he closes it, groaning. “It’s stupid. Embarrassing.”

“What, you catch gonorrhoea or something?”

“What?” Richie says and then, quickly, “ _No._ God, no. I just…I just…. got caught.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I left Bill and Mike and headed off to meet you and…well on the way I stopped one last stagecoach on the road. As a sort of…final score, I guess. It looked like easy pickings. And well. It wasn’t. Turned out that this particular coach was packed with lawmen on their way to oversee a hanging in the next town. “

Eddie opens his mouth and then shuts it again. “Do you mean to tell me,” he says slowly. “That you were in _prison_?”

Richie nods miserably and finally opens his eyes properly.

“Why didn’t I hear about it?” Eddie asks. “If I’d known then, fuck I don’t know, I could have bailed you out or something.” 

“I gave a fake name,” Richie says, sounding frustrated with himself. “At the time it seemed smart but then I realised that no one would know I was in there…And it took a long time before I got friendly enough with a guard to get him to take my letters. Although now I guess he couldn’t have been that friendly. Since apparently you never got them.”

Eddie is silent for a moment, thinking. It could have been that. Or it could have been that Eddie had been living with his wife-to-be even back then. Myra had been the daughter of the rancher that Eddie had been working for. If she had somehow intercepted his mail….

_But no_ , Eddie thinks. _Even Myra wouldn’t have done that_.

And even if she had, what difference would it have made? Either way, the letters had never made it to him. 

“I would have written back,” he tells Richie urgently. “I would have, I don’t know. Busted you out or something.”

Richie smiles a little at that. “That’s what I figured at the time. But then when I got out and came to find you…well I thought maybe you hadn’t written back because you didn’t want to. That you had decided to get settled down. That maybe you’d just fallen in love with someone else.”

Richie says this very matter-of-factly, but Eddie feels cut open by it; all at once he’s almost dying to talk, to somehow let Richie know just how much that isn’t true, how it’s never been true. How it never will be. But in the end his words fail him and all he can do is shake his head.

“My marriage…” he says clumsily. “Myra we were just partners really. Her father died and the ranch was going to be split up. She needed a husband and I had been there for years by then…It was never anything more than that. Even then we could only stand each other for a few years.”

Richie sucks in a sharp breath, watching Eddie with wide eyes. “So, you didn’t…I mean you never- “

“ _No_ ,” Eddie says quickly and doesn’t know if Richie means sex or love, but either way it’s true. “It’s always been you Richie. Just you.”

Richie doesn’t say anything. He looks terrified.

“Do you think there’s any way,” Eddie says wretchedly when he can’t bear the silence anymore. “That in time, maybe you-“

He doesn’t get to finish the sentence because Richie is closing the distance between them and kissing him.

Unlike the last ones, there’s nothing desperate about it and there’s no pain or fear mixed up in it. It’s slow and careful and above all, purposeful. It lasts for a long time and when Richie pulls away, his eyes are dark and he’s breathing a little raggedly. When he pulls away, Eddie’s eyes take a moment to open. He feels stunned; almost wounded.

“I need my glasses,” Richie says. He says it so seriously that for a minute Eddie thinks that he’s misheard, that actually Richie is saying something else.

Eddie is so consumed by thinking about what it was he _wanted_ Richie to say, that he lies there quietly while Richie scrabbles around on the bedside table. When Richie lies back down next to him, he has the glasses perched on the end of his nose and he gives Eddie a long slow look, like he’s taking notes or something.

He spends so long looking that Eddie starts to get anxious and then very quickly annoyed.

“What,” he snaps finally. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Richie says and then he grins, wide and dopey. “I just missed you. So much.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just takes a hold of Richie’s shirt and rolls on top of him. When he’s firmly seated on Richie’s lap and Richie’s hands are on his hips, Eddie leans down to kiss him.

Compared to the last kiss this one isn’t gentle at all. Eddie is putting a lot of his frustration into it and for whatever reason that seems to translate into a lot of tongue and teeth on Richie’s neck. Richie doesn’t seem to mind though and it’s not long until he’s half-hard and doing a bad job of trying to unbutton Eddie’s shirt.

“Wait, wait,” Eddie gasps, grabbing at his hands to slow them. “Richie what was prison like?”

“You want to know that _now_?” Richie asks, twisting up so he can ask the question into Eddie’s neck. His breath feels hot and heavy and Eddie shudders and squirms in place.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “And what happened after you got out? And in Montreal?”

It feels suddenly incredibly important that he knows everything about Richie’s life, every single moment he missed out on. It also seems equally important not to stop touching though, so Eddie starts working on Richie’s shirt, hungry to see as much skin as possible.

“It was uh,” Richie says and groans when Eddie bites at his chest. “Not good. Kind of terrible. Oh fuck, don’t stop, keep going-”

“How did you feel?” Eddie asks him, wrapping his hand around Richie’s dick and pulling it out. “I missed you too Richie, God, I missed you so much.”

“I felt…Eddie what is this?” Richie ask, eyes closing as his hips thrust up. “I don’t know…I felt sad. I felt like shit, of course I did.”  
  


“Me too,” Eddies assures him, undoing his own pants. “I thought about you all the time, I thought about this-“

“You’re so strange,” Richie says and he’s laughing but there’s something desperate and breathy about it and Eddie knows he’s close. “God I can’t believe that this is working for me. You’re lucky I find you so goddamn attractive-”

“You still think so?” Eddie asks, moving down to lick at the curve of Richie’s sweaty hip. He’s incredibly, almost painfully hard, moving against the sheets below him to feel any kind of friction.

“Of course I do, you idiot,” Richie says, practically babbling at this point. “That’s why I was so pissed off that first night. It wasn’t fair that uh, Jesus, that you were still so… so….”

“So what?” Eddie asks, pulling away and licking his lips. Richie looks down at him with dark eyes and then he groans.

“God, you’re going to kill me,” he groans and then he’s pulling Eddie up and licking into his mouth, hot and heavy and clumsy. His hand is shaking when he takes Eddie’s chin, and then he’s kissing over Eddie’s nose, his chin and cheekbone, the cut on his face. Eddie thrusts against him, half mad for some kind of friction, for anything.

“I won’t last,” he warns when Richie finally reaches down between them. “I can’t-“

“It’s okay,” Richie tells him, looking equally close to the edge. “It’s alright. Go ahead. We can do this for the rest of our lives if you want. We have time now.”

“Promise?” Eddie asks, eyes closed and on the verge of falling apart.

“Yes,” Richie says, and if anything, it sounds more intense in his scratched up broken voice. “Yes, of course. I promise. I promise-”

* * *

In the end it’s only the thought of breakfast that gets them out of bed and dressed. When they finally come downstairs, the boarding house is nearly empty, save for the landlady who gives them a dirty look.

“You think she heard us?” he mutters to Richie as they step outside into the street.

“Maybe,” Richie says happily. “Or maybe she just thinks we’re lazy.”

It’s bright out there in the daylight and Eddie squints, holding his hand up against the light.

“It’s so hot,” he complains. “What time is it anyway?”

“Past midday,” Richie says and then he takes off his hat, holding it out.

Eddie blinks at it for a moment, not understanding.

“That’s your hat,” he says, somewhat stupidly and Richie laughs.

“I know,” he says and then, when Eddie still doesn’t take it, he huffs out a breath and puts it on Eddie’s head for him. He tilts it down carefully, so the shade falls over Eddie’s eyes and then he steps back to admire the result, head tilted to one side.

“Not bad,” he says lightly. “Shall we go find the others? If I know Bev, they’re probably in the saloon.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says doubtfully, still worried about the hat. He adjusts it a little and frowns. “Does it suit me?” 

Richie’s smile is as bright as the sun but for once, Eddie has no trouble looking at it.

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I think it suits you just fine.”

**Epilogue: Once Upon A Time In The West**

The stagecoach is still two miles from town when Eddie sees the riders on the hill. They’re just two dark silhouettes against the skyline but he knows trouble when he sees it.

“Hey,” he says. “You’ve got the gun loaded right?”

Richie, who’s sitting up beside him trying out card tricks, scoffs in disgust.

“Have I got the gun loaded?” he echoes. “Who do you think I am? Is _your_ gun loaded?”

“I can’t shoot and drive at the same time,” Eddie tells him crossly.

“You can,” Richie objects. “I’ve seen you.”

“Well that was under special circumstances,” Eddie says primly and then, because Richie is grinning at him, he stops pretending to be annoyed and smiles back.

It’s hard not to be in a good mood today, when the sun is shining, and Richie is riding up shotgun next to him. Especially at the end of a journey. They’re planning to take a week or two off after this to go and finally visit Stan and the baby. Not that she’s much of a baby now; she must be almost six now. Maybe go see Beverly and Ben up at the cabin after that.

Eddie looks up at the hills. The riders are getting closer now; there’s no mistaking the beeline they’re making down towards the carriage.

“You ready?” he asks. “It could be trouble.”

“Isn’t it always?” Richie says and when Eddie looks over, they catch eyes for a second.

Eddie can’t say _I love you_ with the passengers sitting behind them in the coach, but Richie must see it on his face anyway, because he smiles, slow and easy.

“Want to make them work for it?” he asks and picks up the gun from under the seat, cocking it with practised kind of ease.

“Better hold on then,” Eddie warns and then, with a flick of the reins, they’re away and flying.


	7. Artwork

_"Eddie thinks about arguing but instead he just pulls Richie down and kisses him. Richie leans into it, lips so warm and soft that for a minute Eddie forgets the cold cave and the smell of blood._

_When they pull apart, he sees Richie has taken off his hat and is holding up to shield them from the others. It’s just a small thing but for some reason it effects Eddie more than the kiss itself. It feels like being protected."_

A huge thank you for the art by the amazing and supremely talented Poornell: _<https://twitter.com/poornell/status/1290787774153416705/photo/1>_

Please check out their twitter and show them some love, they've done a lot of other awesome Reddie illustrations which are all equally as good! 

**Author's Note:**

> Spins giant flashing prize wheel that is my brain: hmm yes, I think today Eddie shall be a …. stagecoach driver in the old west.  
> No really, in reality this came from being stuck in lockdown with nothing to do except play unhealthy amounts of Red Dead Redemption and listen the Orville Peck. The title of this fic actually comes from his song ‘Dead of Night’ so check it out if you have a chance! It’s very much the vibe I’m going for with this fic. A note about the geography of this fic: in short, I know it’s fucked up and inaccurate. I have a google maps open and I’m pulling names from there but I have no idea how many of these places existed in the time in which I’m setting this, which is itself unspecified because, well basically, as much as I love cowboy shit, I’m not prepared to become an expert on the old west just to keep this self-indulgent fic about gay cowboys accurate. I do apologise though and hope you like it anyway! 
> 
> Please tell me what you think below xxx. It’s really fun to be writing for IT again.


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